


The Myth of Sisyphus

by Brigand



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Claustrophobia, F/F, F/M, Graphic Description, M/M, Major Character Injury, Masturbation, Non-Canon Relationship, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Psychosis, References to Illness, Religious Conflict, Religious Content, Slow Burn, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-02-17 15:43:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 48,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13080093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigand/pseuds/Brigand
Summary: More come to join them along the way - some hold fast, some expire, but a handful of them begin at the beginning and end at the precipice.





	1. Old Road

The barrels strapped tight to the roof of the stagecoach clatter with each rock and pit on the road. Dismas leans forward with each judder of the battered horse-drawn carriage, torn curtains flapping against stained glass, and he realizes that he doesn’t want to think about the damned thing any longer. He focuses instead on the man sitting adjacent, who looks like something out of a storybook.

When he turns, the errant light of the running lamp catches on armor that’s dented and rusting at the edges. _Well, maybe not exactly from a storybook._ He’s too distracted by the misery of being in a stagecoach, of all things, that he startles when the man speaks.  


“Do you know how long we’ve been on this Light-forsaken road?” The heavy visor makes the voice ring just enough to hear over the heavy din of wheels and luggage.

“Nay. Reckon we’ll be riding up to sunrise soon.”

He figures the man next to him hears the uncertainty in his voice and knows he doesn’t know shit, because the visor turns back to stare straight ahead. He knows his dead time from a lengthy stay in the county prison, spent watching the moon rise behind a grated window. They’ve ridden for what feels like a damn week, but neither rose for food or drink, nor asked to stop to piss. That goes for the heir as well, who fidgets nervously across from knight and highwayman.

Maybe it’s because the forest surrounding the road has been uniform and bereft of any directional markers since nightfall, and he reckons just sitting there stewing in his own misfortune has him going plum mad. _Old man Dismas,_ he thinks, _who wholeheartedly believes he’s been holding in his piss for an entire week._ He’s relieved to finally see sunrise, spreading across the tops of the red forest.

His thoughts go out the window when he hears the old man in the driver’s box above scream with laughter.

 

He doesn’t shout when he hears the spokes shatter, the wheels of the carriage bending outwards as they slam against the road.

 _“Fucking hell!”_ The heir doesn’t have the same presence of mind. His Lordship is pitching most ungracefully, like a fish drowning on land. Dismas throws himself from the carriage door, shoulder checking the dirt road, and he can see the knight tossing the noble out on his arse before crash landing himself.

The horses tear away into the night, stagecoach veering to the side of the road, just shy of a steep precipice overlooking the pass. They’re just listening, frozen, as cargo comes loose and tumbles off the side of the bluff, smashing as it impacts, the sudden violence deafening and just as quickly swallowed by the vast forest. There’s not much they can do for it – Dismas doesn’t care, he’s certain the sallow little man who hired him has plenty more where that came from.

The knight is bracing said sallow little man, who looks so like a woman on a fainting couch. Dismas isn’t sure he’s able to hide his distaste about it either, but mostly he’s focused on not thinking about the last time he saw a stagecoach run off its path. 

The heir is looking at him, speaking low. “The estate is but a few kilometers north. We can’t tarry, we’ve wasted enough time as it is.” Before he can say more, the knight is carrying the man nearly entirely on his shoulder and is walking, almost marching, in a direction that he supposes is north, to the hamlet of Anchester, somewhere in the sprawl of gnarled forestland.

It’s several hours’ worth of trudging when Dismas realizes he’s only enough coin for one, maybe two drinks, of the watered-down and barely fit to drink kind. He wonders if maybe he ought to postpone redemption for a few more days, and half expects something or someone to smite him for the thought.

He slows down to let the knight and the pallid fop on his shoulder catch up.

_

Turns out, it pays to walk ahead of the man whose heavy footsteps can be heard for miles around. When the cutthroat misses his mark between the plates covering shoulder and neck, Dismas hooks one arm tight around his chest and cuts unevenly across his neck, somewhere beneath the ear, far deeper than need be. The body drops, convulsing, undercoat staining blue to blue-black. When the other of his band, a fusilier, stupidly steps out of the undergrowth to engage, the knight is quick to swing at his unprotected head.

Dismas has seen a lot of shit in his day, but never a fucking longsword impacting against an unarmored skull, cutting just deep enough to hit bone and stun the man before the killing blow, impaling the _entire width_ of the man beneath the sternum. His musket doesn’t make a sound when it hits the forest floor. Dismas doesn’t want to wretch, he just stares.

The heir is breathing heavily, some ten feet away. He was walking unassisted a few minutes into the trek after telling the knight to _dismount me from your pauldron, would you._ Now, it’s looking like he might need to get back on.

The visor turns to face Dismas, disapproving. “You would do well to stay in formation, with your allies. Have you forgotten that your job is to safeguard your master and his birthright?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but his birthright’s sitting at the bottom of a ditch some ways back.” Dismas isn’t having any of it, not today. “We’re already halfway out of our contractual obligation.”

The heir is staring nervously at their faces, unsure about the unexpected conflict, but Dismas doesn’t break eye contact.

Being honest, he’s a bit incensed. He’s not used to being the hero, so hearing _thank you, Dismas, for saving my life_ would have been at least some affirmation that he didn’t make the wrong choice in running from his troubles in a desperate bid to do _good_ , for once. It was as though the apparition of Charity herself had spurned him.  
  
It’s the heir who lets out a warning shout when the musket ball narrowly misses the highwayman’s neckerchief, when two brigands wearing their brethren’s color emerge from the forest.

_Reinforcements._

_

The bloodletter’s lash makes full contact with Dismas’ face, and he realizes just how badly he underestimated the severity of such a weapon – it’s not the damage but the sheer _agony_ of having his skin torn off that disorients him, sending him to the ground. He can just make out the knight’s yell and the patter of metal against armor. _Their fusilier switched to grapeshot, to hit the weak spots between plates. Smart bastard._ It’s all he can process, before muscle memory kicks in and reaches for the gun.

The first shot, straight to the massive brigand’s chest, lodges between his ribs and doesn’t do shit. He bellows once, but raises the whip for another blow, aiming for the eyes this time. There’s no way he can reload laying down. One white-knuckled hand grips the flintlock, arm over his face.

The hit doesn’t come. The hilt of a rusted longsword smashes the back of the bandit’s head, and the knight stands over the stunned bloodletter, David atop the still body of the Philistine champion. One tired stab into the neck and it’s over. The similarly massacred fusilier lies nearby.

He kneels when he mutters, “may the Light judge you more mercifully than I.” When he stands, he finds Dismas hands-deep in the fusilier’s pockets, grinning when he produces gold even as blood runs along his jawline.

“Is this money tainted, holy man? I can’t confess to knowing the rules set out by your god, only that if it affords some measure of comfort in this life it’s forbidden.” He really ought to thank him, but he reasons they’re even now.

The heir’s eyes are affixed to the road ahead – he’s no less uncomfortable now than he was before. That he was able to escape both encounters unscathed is nothing short of a miracle.

The knight, to the highwayman’s surprise, bends to search the bloodletter. “No. What they earned in this life now goes to sustain the righteous.” Almost petulantly, he adds, “by the righteous, I mean me. I’ll not have you imagining that the Light does not hear your insult, but now is not the time to bicker.”

“Oh, we’ve plenty of time, you and I, old boy. Don’t think I don’t have some questions. Where’d you go about getting a suit of armor like that? You come from some storybook, to rescue a princess in a castle?” He pulls a small bar of glistening citrine from old leathers.

“God’s eyes! I would have you hold your tongue from insulting a crusader of the Holy Light!”

“A crusader.” Dismas laughs. “Is that what you imagine yourself to be? Some old-world infantryman- “

The longsword is pressed against his neckerchief now. He’s close enough to see the other man’s eyes glint from behind the visor. The heir breaks the silence, placing a hand on the knight’s glove, placating.

“You’ll both find plenty of adversity on my father’s estate without turning on your fellow man. Anchester is only a few kilometers north- “

“That’s what you said seven hours ago.” Dismas isn’t just cross with the religious zealot. Now his attention is on the duke of eyebags across from him, who brought them both onto a piece of shit stagecoach, made them walk half a day for some piece of shit village, and cowered like a piece of shit during confrontation.

“-As I was saying, we’re nearing a township shortly, with provisions and a place to rest and – for God’s sake, rogue, will you bandage your face- “

“You shall not take the Light’s host name in vain! I-“

“Maybe I _like_ the sensation of blood on my face, your Lordship, so bugger off-“

_”You shall not take the Light’s host name in-“_

“You’ll _not_ speak to your master-“

“You? You are master of _none_ , least of all-“

“You’d be remiss to forget that the contract essentially states I _own you-_ “

“Right, I’m not the man who _shat his britches_ when-“

This morning they spoke twice in the carriage, once on the forest pass. Now they can’t stop yelling over each other, the nobleman with arms folded tightly over his chest, Dismas waving a bar of citrine in his face.

They stop when the knight lets out a small huffing noise before dropping to one knee, the adrenaline leaving him. Dismas isn’t sure what prompts the strong response, just that the two of them are kneeling over the self-professed crusader in a matter of seconds. He’s sure it’s because he really doesn’t want to be stuck defending both the blueblood and knight for the rest of the way, and the heir really doesn’t want to rely on one meager highwayman to defend against the bands of roadside footpads.

The kneeling man waves one gloved hand in their faces, smacking the heir’s lower eyelid in his unfocused state. “Leave me be, you’ll be of no help anyway,” he says, bad-tempered. “I’ve endured far worse for far longer during the campaigns. Let me rest a moment.”

It takes near half an hour to rid the crusader of his outer garments and figure out how to detach the suspension and plate, then remove the arming clothes. At least he gives up resisting about half of the way through and lies complaining, undisposed to _helping in the slightest_ as they struggle. The heir and highwayman mutually agree to leaving everything from the waist down on, and the helmet (for his own dignity.) Eventually Dismas sees the grapeshot, lodged into skin beneath the gaps in the armor along his arms, the crusader taking shuddering breaths underneath him. It’s only when Dismas reaches to take off his own gloves that he hears him start up again.

“Absolutely not.”

Dismas doesn’t bother looking into his visor, he knows the man is glaring.

“Absolutely _not, heathen._ ”

He isn’t actually going to dig the bullets out, that would be far more dangerous than just leaving them be. He examines one hand studiously, noting how he’s trimmed the nails all the way up to the nail plate.

“You haven’t washed your hands in a _decade._ Your impurity will enter my body and disrupt my humors.”

The shots aren’t near vital organs, and the wounds will close naturally given enough time. Didn’t the man know that?

_“Your filthy sausage fingers will not touch my sacred body.”_

Dismas doesn’t know why that makes him laugh so hard he nearly falls on top of the ailing knight, but he reckons tearing up his neckerchief into cloth strips and tightly binding each wound more than makes up for it. The heir watches, not saying a word, as their sojourn ends with them picking up where they left off, heading north.

_

Finding the brigands’ tent just several paces up the road is a godsend. Having not eaten last night nor during the day, the cheese and plain bread are worth more than the onyx and gold (although having both isn't bad, either.) The knight chose to eat alone within calling distance further down the road, having not quite forgiven the two of them for conspiring to denude him earlier. Dismas is busy tearing into his share, having had the ingenious revelation of putting the cheese between the bread, when he realizes the heir has stopped, having eaten a quarter of his portion.

“How far out is Anchester, now?”

The heir looks up at him. “For certain, at our current pace, but an hour out.” 

“Then there’s no need to save for later. Or is it so far from your usual fare that you find it that distasteful?”

The heir doesn’t grimace or have a witty repartee. He just looks tired. “What with my forefather calling me to stave some evil from the family estate at the start of the fiscal year with no rhyme nor reason, I haven’t had the stomach for victuals, or sleep.”

Dismas snorts. “Come off it, that’s what _we’re_ here for, isn’t it? You needn’t worry, it’s not your head on the line. Take a few more bites-“ much to his amusement, the heir takes a disinterested bite out of his provisions, “-there now, that’s a good lad.”

It’s only now that Dismas realizes just how _young_ the heir is, when he realizes he could feasibly be his father. His white skin, thin wrists, and fitted coat are an allegory of the well-bred noble, something out of a Hogarth print. In contrast, the highwayman’s dark skin, wiry muscle, and tatty overcoat has him looking the part of the town scoundrel. He prefers to keep it that way, he thinks.

“One more thing, then. Let’s not go about this as vassal and master, I’d rather mercenary and lord. Sound good?” The heir simply nods as the knight makes his way back, the late afternoon light and filled stomachs quelling further arguments on the road.

_

Anchester must have been a sprawling township at one point in time, judging by the acres of abandoned farmland along its outskirts. Dismas watches as the forest and undergrowth become more stripped and bare the closer they get towards the settlement, rotting undergrowth consumed by fat bells of fungus. He figures some sort of crop rot originated from the farms, then spread further outwards into the surrounding vegetation – hardly some antediluvian evil to be excised. He’s more than half certain that most of his contract time will be spent protecting residents from bandits. A mundane task, but it’s fitting for the crime, so it’s all he can ask for.

The heart of the hamlet looks like a war zone that nobody bothered to fix in the aftermath. The three stand affixed to one side of the river marking the township’s limits, oil lamps within the buildings peering like cat’s eyes out of the smashed windows just minutes after sunset.

The heir looks at the still mercenaries, not certain how to break the silence. “Welcome to Anchester, such that it is.”

He’s the first to step foot on the stone bridge; the other two follow suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hero barks tell us that the recruits are most interesting when they're afflicted - they're melodramatic, fourth-wall breaking, honest, cruel, and hilarious. That's why out-of-character interactions come out during or after conflict, and more grounded interaction between heroes occur at the Hamlet between dungeons.
> 
> Criticism is always welcome, the next chapter further exploring Anchester (and our first two recruits) will be out shortly.


	2. Anchester

Feeling the air hit his bare face fills him with a distinctive dread, the kind that comes from a lifetime as a career outlaw. Dismas is fingering the gold in his overcoat, nervous to spend it on drink and a new neckerchief.

The heir must have heard it, because he says in all seriousness, “You are allowed the earnings you took along the Old Road. However, I must remind you that any future earnings or items plundered from the estate must be turned over to me.” He gets a nod from knight and highwayman.

Dismas isn’t sure if the money will matter at all; the hamlet’s center, normally the heart of commerce in a settlement, is empty of its people. Although most commoners were inside by sundown, there would still be the remnants of some activity in the town square: women drawing water for the livestock, merchants packing their wares, children tempting their mothers’ steadfast bedtimes. The unease from the stagecoach ride is back in full force.

They pass the boarded up hull of a pub, a stone building that would have been an infirmary, past a smattering of houses to a stone stronghold. Barracks, most likely once reserved for the city guard.

“This is where you will find your accommodations. I suggest you get your rest for tonight.” He pauses before adding, “we have much to discuss in the morning.” The heir turns heel at the barrack steps and is quick to dissipate into the twilight, further back from the residential buildings.

Once inside, Dismas rescinds his previous suggestion of a city guard. The barracks are large enough to host a small standing army, much larger than one needed to protect a hamlet of this size. Just another mystery of Anchester, he supposes. The austerity of the building at night is oppressive – he sets about turning on oil lamps to illuminate the bunks, wooden chests at their foot end. Although the building looks abandoned, someone has been here recently to sweep the floors and set out oil and blankets – one of the townsfolk, possibly?

He’s putting a few logs into the wood burning stove before he realizes he’s got no way to light it. He hates to do it, but he unholsters the rusting flintlock and strikes the metal barrel with the dagger, pleased when the sparks catch and take hold on the kindling. He hears the knight’s footsteps behind him on the stone floor.

“The roadside thieves had a similar instrument.”

“Aye. But their musket is no match for the accuracy of a flintlock, crusader of the Holy Light. If their fusilier didn’t have such lousy aim, he wouldn’t have need to turn to grapeshot. _I_ wouldn’t have, perish the thought.” He closes the grate of the stove and holds his hands close to the fire.

“…Musket?” It’s the uncertainty in his voice that gives Dismas pause.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what a gun is, now. It might explain the sword, come to think of it.”

The crusader’s voice turns stiff. “My sword has served me well, far better than some object of hellfire and metal.”

Dismas laughs. “Aye, indeed, today it has.” He gets up, reluctant to leave the warmth of the hearth casting a warm glow across the garrison’s walls.

_

A search through separate quarters of the barracks reveals a washroom, with linens and wooden pails of water drawn from the hamlet’s well. Any desire to continue exploring the garrison fades under the overwhelming need to take a bath. Uninterested in carrying water to the stove to warm it, Dismas strips down to his undergarments before decidedly taking those off as well.

Lord, he hasn’t had a bath in _weeks_. After his last high-profile hit, heat from the bobbies kept him running roadside in London without stop for food or rest. He's still got no idea where Anchester is on the map – he’d been circling the drain, running aimlessly in all directions before being scouted at a pub drinking his coin away, because the heir had smelled blood in the water and took advantage of someone desperate enough to run his fool’s errand. The rest had been blurred by alcohol – next thing he knew he’d slept for days on a rickety stagecoach, a man in full armor materializing next to him when he awoke.

The thought sours him. The heir was deceptively blundering on the road, but unconstrained by situational doubts he was quick to take advantage of some cutthroat on his last legs.

The tallow soap reduces into a thick lather – he’s rarely had the chance to have a horse bath when on the road, much less soap up like a wealthy woman soaking in rose water, so he’s covering himself head to toe, same with the hair, until any semblance of skin is buried beneath white foam save for his peepers.

It’s when he’s about to douse himself that he hears the heavy footsteps of the crusader, telegraphed to him what feels like miles in advance, and he’s not in the position to do much but stare in his general direction, frozen, as he rounds the corner in slow motion while Dismas is looking like the fucking bare-assed ghost of Christmas past.

Dismas learns that the crusader might be exceptionally slow walking forwards, but that he’s _exceptionally_ fast backtracking.

_

When he finishes and reappears in the barracks, he notices that the crusader has picked the top bunk along the righthand side, closest to the wood stove. His armor and trappings are laid out neatly on the bottom bunk.

The bunks are tightly packed – there can’t be more than two feet between each. Dismas lays his overcoat out on the bottom bunk, then flintlock and dirk, hanging his undershirt, stockings, and drawers out to dry (as they too had undergone a vigorous tallow bath). He snuffs out the lanterns before hoisting himself up to the top bunk, now two feet away from the crusader’s prone form.

He’s picked the second bunk along the righthand side closest to the wood stove. There is just the two of them, so safety in numbers, he reckons.

“You could have said a word of forewarning before I entered, you wretch.” Looks like the crusader is awake.

Dismas is unapologetic. “I was frozen in the moment. Quick reflexes with the pistol, not the mind. Sorry about it, old boy.”

The crusader is quick to sit up, undeterred by the pain in his arms. His tone is dangerous. “You are too familiar with me. I am your ally on the battlefield by necessity, but when we do not fight, you are no brother of mine.”

Dismas shrugs. “Right, it’s no skin off my nose, then.” Something occurs to him. “I can’t call you ‘old boy’ forever, knight. What’s your name?”

He can tell that the crusader is mentally weighing telling an irritating man his name with having the irritating man call him an irritating epithet, and he can tell that the name wins out in the end.

“Reynauld.”

“That wasn’t so hard. The name’s Dismas.” 

“An ill-fitting name. You are not penitent by any means.”

He’s a bit ornery about that. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“The men and women of the Light spend a lifetime in good works to heal their grievances. You expect forgiveness for the bare minimum of human decency?”

“…T’would be nice, I’ll not lie about that.”

Reynauld pulls the linens over his head, and it’s the end of the discussion for the night.

_

Dismas is up when pale rays cut across his blanket, the smell of wood ash in the frigid air, and he’s hungry as hell. He adjusts his stiff undershirt in the wash room water’s reflection, splashing some of it on his face. It’s probably unboiled rainwater, but he drinks some of it anyway. The lacerations on his cheek have coagulated, and will heal in short order – he’s just glad it didn’t cut across his eye.

Right now, he wants to go out and see the hamlet in full, in search of neckerchief, swill, and breakfast. He’s studiously counting the coin in his overcoat, when he comes to a full stop.

Just a few days ago, – or was it weeks? – he didn’t have the willpower for anything other than drinking, gambling, and drowning in his guilt, only having the remnants of his self-preservation to thank for evading law enforcement. The stage coach ride numbed him.

The crusader stirs, grunting in an undignified manner. His wounds probably ache from want of proper treatment. He would have benefited from a wash earlier.

“Right, it’s time to be up now, knight. Let’s go out on the town for breakfast, then find you some proper bandage, what say you?”

Reynauld can’t climb down the ladder to the side of the bunk – arm movements shift the bullets in place, painfully disrupting his wounds. He doesn’t want to admit as much, but he’s stuck up there.

“…You’re stuck up there, aren’t you?”

By the Light, he wasn’t having this. Not today.

Day two of being a good man, and Dismas is about ready to quit the whole business. He’s got the knight slung over his shoulder, stinking of yesterday’s sweat and blood, making a racket about how the highwayman mistreats his holy body or whatnot. It’s a thinly veiled way of taking his mind off the pain, and Dismas can respect that. 

“You’re sleeping on the bottom bunk tonight, old chap. None of this top bunk nonsense for you,” he chides, and the knight is too busy sweating to say otherwise. He’s also mute when Dismas takes him to the washroom to clean his wounds, untying the makeshift bandages, and wiping the grime off his neck and face – it’s the best he can do. He feels like he’s done _more_ than enough for the Light’s forgiveness now, if he’s being honest. Not that he wants it, if it was being proffered, if this god is even real.

Eventually Reynauld’s feeling well enough to venture from the barrack doors, so the two of them make their way out, walking slowly through the residential area.

_

Dismas’ instinct to go further out from the district center proves to be correct – a small gathering of farmers and townsfolk further back from the entrance to the hamlet reveal some meager supply of bread and other provisions for sale, a mockery of the robust bazaar of a lively town. The residents of Anchester go quiet when they see him, staring; it’s disquieting, and Dismas realizes they might have ran or outright attacked if he had a neckerchief, the universal sign of a stickup.

He raises his hands in a placating gesture, but realizes he has a better proposition, withdrawing the gold from his overcoat.

The old woman is silent, staring as she hands him a loaf of bread for enough coin to buy bread ten times over in London, but he knows he’s not being up charged. He watched them, undetected, to be certain before approaching. He also bade the knight stay back behind one of the buildings – he wasn’t entirely certain what their reaction would be to a man riddled in bullets, sweating from the exertion of walking. He’s relieved that he talked him out of wearing the suit of armor for a walk around town.

He gets another loaf, two tins of sardines, a small wheel of cheese wrapped in butcher paper, three hardboiled eggs – before he knows it, he’s down from a hundred something coin to just under thirty coin. He can hardly believe it, but he can’t say it’s a first for him. When he was young he spent coin the second it touched his palm, on base pleasures when he could afford it but more often on just the bare minimum for survival. That changed when he got older, when he got _better_ at it.

The old crone is the first to break the silence.

“What is your business here, highwayman? There is naught to take. We are but so few left.” She’s steadfast in her righteousness, bravely staring Dismas in the eye.

“I’ve only good intentions, madam – I’m here on contractual business, with the lord of the keep.”

Her bravery is quick to leave her. “The de la Poers. It _cannot be._ The Baron Exham has returned, to finish us off. He has come to resurrect the damnable thing, has he not? The seat of his family’s evil?”

Any hostility the villagers might have had at the highwayman’s arrival can’t compare to the overwhelming fear that besets them. Even with the paucity of money in the hamlet, the stands are quickly packed and the people rush, each one of them to their homestead. Dismas is left alone, standing with his eggs and coin.

He’s pieced together Anchester’s small-town superstition he thinks, same story wherever his travels have taken him. There was no money to settle elsewhere, and leaving meant loss of income from not farming. The widespread brigand camps along the mountain and forest pass, poor road conditions, and precarious cliffs meant the possibility of losing everything on the Old Road.

The townsfolk are trapped in a cycle of poverty, breeding fear amongst themselves.

He’s starting to think that the crop blight isn’t the only thing that lead to the town’s ruin.

_

Reynauld is mystified about the can of sardines – Dismas has to be the one to peel open the tab for him to reveal the salted fish nestled inside, and he doesn’t take to them with much enthusiasm.

“These are _disgusting._ ”

“Right then, you take the other egg, and _I’ll_ take the fish.” Dismas is happy to take the sardines – they’re good with hard breads, the staler the better.  
  
They’re quick to realize just how bloody _thirsty_ the food makes them – by necessity, they’re making their way to the town well for a drink. It’s after they’re sated that they hear the sound of horse hooves and old wheels on paved stone.

Dismas watches in disbelief; the old bastard who crashed the stage coach sits inside an even shoddier replacement in the form of a canvassed wagon, the cover so torn that it barely shields the passengers from the wind. More importantly, how did the scraggly little fuck outright disappear after the crash? 

The man in the rider’s seat turns, as if on cue, to stare at him, mouth drawn back to show teeth and gum line. Dismas reckons he isn’t smiling.

Reynauld shakes him, pointing as two figures descend from the wagon bed, each with a firm grasp on a contract – signed, no doubt. The heir has found his newest volunteers.

_

Dismas doesn’t want to act like he’s upset when Reynauld recognizes the nun as a “sister of the Light,” whatever that means, and they go off and do their own thing when she says he _must_ come away to be healed of his mortal wounds, noble vassal of the Light that he is. He spent the livelong morning carrying and washing and getting him something to eat like a mother hen, more the fool he for expecting thanks for it.

The other recruit has a physician’s mask and smells distinctly of aromatic herb – the overwhelming scent of camphor and laudanum covers the pleasant clove and lemon balm. The woman inspects him with an almost birdlike intellect, although he suspects it might just be the mask.

“A curious wound. You are not in the business of self-flagellation, I take it, although the only place I have seen such a striation has been from the practitioners of the church. More the fools they,” she says with scorn. “You are not a fool, are you?”

He doesn’t have time to react before chirurgen’s gloves are pressed emphatically to his face. “Let me scrape out a sample!” she says. “You will be compensated with only the knowledge that you greatly benefit the church of scientific inquiry!”

Dismas thinks that if there is a god, the knight and nun – _someone_ – would be in the vicinity to witness a five-foot-nothing bird woman trying to split him open for the good of the church of science (which he doubts exists.) The woman yells in surprise when he grabs her wrist, just inches away from going back in for another probe at his face.  
  
“What is this? You doubt the efficacy of my research?” 

“You want to scrape a healing wound! I hardly know ye!” He tones down the indignation in his voice – he’s been brought up a certain way to behave with women, and he’s not letting his manners leave him, even now.

The woman stares up at him, glass goggles obscuring her eyes. “You’re right!”

“I’m right?” Dismas doesn’t know what’s good for himself, sometimes.

“A flog leaves a pattern of deep laceration and shallow abrasion. A laceration is of no interest, but a cut not deep enough to puncture blood vessels leaks the ever-precious lymph fluids!”

“Naturally.” He’s got no idea what she’s saying, but he really wants to keep her talking.

“I am too late to collect it into a vial, but the wound has not yet coagulated in its entirety. I would be a fool to collect it before it scabs.” She releases him, satisfied. “My cambiums are imbalanced from such a dreadful journey – come with me to the stage coach, for breakfast.”

With the new and distinctive lack of a town market in which to purchase rations, it’s a relief to see the caretaker unloading crates upon crates of provisions. It’s less of a relief when the man turns and hands him a worn price sheet.

Lord, everything’s in the _double digits_ around here. Any other highwayman would knife the store counter in fury at such fraudulent business and never come back. The plague doctor stares at him, expectant.

In the end, he hands over his drinking money for the little woman to have some bread and treacle, figuring there’s no point holding onto coin if the one pub in the township’s out of business. She thanks him for his _donation_ to her research and sits with him at the well, happily downing her bread in a most unwomanly manner, speaking with her mouth full. Dismas reckons he’s earned himself clemency from her _collection,_ but he’s too smart a man to ask, so he just listens, reloading his flintlock with the powders in his overcoat.

“When I saw the publication in the university’s papers–“ the bread almost falls out of her mouth before she catches it, “–to call for those of any background in medicine or combat to aid in a campaign to thwart some unidentified adversary, I knew it was ground that I had to be the _first_ to cover. It could even be the birthplace of lasting contributions to the medical field. An unidentified adversary can be a new genus, a new species, a new _kingdom-“_

“It’s just crop rot, lass.” He watches the young woman from the corner of his eye as he runs a bit of rag across the pistol’s barrel.

She looks at him, knowing. “Is that what you think it is?”

The knight is fast approaching, nun at his side, telling him to get up before he can ask what the hell is going on.

_

The athenaeum stands relatively unscathed in comparison to the damage of the other non-residential buildings – an observatory juts out from behind roofing and hewed stone. It’s there that the heir, Dismas realizes, has taken up residence. There is little in the room besides telescope, desk, chair, and papers. A letter with a broken wax seal sits prominently under the heir’s clasped hands as he addresses them.

“You will each carry individual rucksacks for provisions and loot. The caretaker makes his runs weekly for such items as needed – you will not be able to barter or purchase them from the impoverished commoners, as they too rely on his supply in such scant times.” His voice is steady, his speech clearly rehearsed.

“I’ll make purchases for provisions prior to each expedition. You are welcome to take whatever you have or make purchases with your own coin, provided they don’t crowd your inventory overmuch.”

He says his next lines slowly. “The crypt is a labyrinth, of which I have no map of. My forbearer has left me a record of the lengths of its many corridors, but the contents within I know _nothing_ of. Just the journey to the estate is half a day’s walk. I fully expect you to be able to explore the corridor I’ve mapped for you to its end in a day’s time. Plan for two day's worth of rations, and carry other objects such that you may survive such an indeterminate endeavor.” The plague doctor is confident enough to snort at the proposition of such a quick death, but something heavy is settling in Dismas’ stomach.

The heir reaches for the letter, crumpling it with an unexpected strength before it disappears under the desk. “One last thing. The costs of necessities in this hamlet are obscenely high, as you’ve noticed. There is a very real reason to forgo the items in your pack if you can bring more from my family’s estate out with you. I cannot pay the caretaker without the loot you find, and it could leave you unprepared for the next expedition in turn.”  
  
The implications of the heir's words hang in the air, and it's all Dismas can do to restrain himself. Of all the things he wasn't prepared for, he didn’t account for the possibility that the noble was fucking _penniless._

When they emerge from the athenaeum soon after, nobody speaks – it’s a half hour between returning to the barracks for weapon and armor, then another terse walk to the ramshackle building where the caretaker has set up shop.  
  
Dismas hasn’t the coin for _anything_ anymore, not a bandage nor a loaf of bread. Whatever the heir has deemed as enough for the expedition has to be _enough_ , and the thought keeps him quiet as he's stashing gunpowder and snuff into his trousers. He didn't have the time to tell the old woman that they were here to excise whatever evil the heir had imagined on his family estate, and he'd intended to mean clearing the brigand hordes, protecting the residents of Anchester and seeing them through an unfortunate season of diseased crops and poor weather.  
  
_Is that what you think it is?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The names of the hamlet, the family lineage, and the manor are taken from Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls," of which the game is based off of.
> 
> Also, Dismas definitely just washed and hung his underwear out to dry from the side of his bunk on the first night of residency. Truly, the man of our dreams has arrived.


	3. Ruins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depiction of claustrophobic setting and graphic violence ahead.

The plague doctor’s name is Paracelsus, and she’s the least afraid to die, Dismas thinks. A glass of green liquid on her belt is fastened securely next to other bottles of varying hues of bile green – one of them, she explains, cures blight, and the other gives it. She must have seen the look on his face because she’s quick to reassure him that there’s no chance of mistaking one for the other.

The vestal – Junia, she said her name was – carries her parcel of holy water and bandage carefully, one hand along the bottom, as though afraid that its contents would fall through. She was none too pleased to be called a nun, and wasn’t interested in talking with him further. Her loss, Dismas thinks.

“Why just the four of us?” Paracelsus stops, stooping as her hand clamps around some plant in the underbrush, uprooting it in one swift motion. “If it’s as dangerous as he says, then he could be sending a small army to his haunted mansion.” She stuffs the flora in a satchel around her waist. 

“The boy’s broke, isn’t he? He can barely afford what he’s got,” Dismas says. “And come time that he can’t pay up, I’ll be gone, just like that.” It’s not a matter of nerves, he says to himself. It’s a matter of coin.

The next flower caught under the physic’s glove is either placed in her beak or stuffed in her mouth, he’s not sure which. “Oh, but you can’t, unless he personally dismisses you. Or you die, whichever comes first. Didn’t you read the contract?”

He didn’t. “What’ll he do, set the law on my trail? Let him try. No bounty hunter or lawman has ever collected on my head.”

Junia looks at him with a mixture of pity and disgust. “You are so quick to turn tail. Have you any resolve or faith?”

“Your convent saw to your alms and your board, nun. You wouldn’t cast the first stone if you knew hunger or cold-“ he sees her face twisting, and he knows he’s struck a chord, “-so don’t preach to me about _resolve,_ aye?”

“Enough.” Reynauld has one hand on Dismas’ shoulder. His grip is much stronger than it was this morning, and his command is enough to make him feel like a child caught with his hand in the sugar bowl.

“Save your strength. You’ll need each other when we reach the crypts.”

“What do you think we’ll find there?” Paracelsus is wholly unbothered by the infighting. “If even a fraction of the family’s wealth is buried with the dead, brigands will have infested the place, if they haven’t looted it for everything it’s got already.”

“They might have done. Look.” In the clearing they can see the isolated stretch of land, ending at a steep cliff dropping into a limestone crag where the ocean’s waves crash, tumultuous. Dismas notes the unusual lack of seabirds, an abundance of which should be nesting and circling the black outcropping of stone islands jutting out of the sea. In fact, the entirety of the estate’s land is silent save for the sound of the waves.

Eroded towers and fragmented parapets signal the parameter of the Estate’s crypts, the former halls of the family’s private mausoleum. Dismas has held up many a rich aristocrat with the intent to rob, not kill, but the idea of mass looting a family grave doesn’t sit with him so well. It’s not his decision to make, though – the others are already moving, making to pass the acres of unknown territory to reach the ruins.

Dismas hopes there’s brigands. He might go mad if they’re in the catacombs alone, taking rings from the departed in unending silence.

_

The entrance to the crypt has been smashed, the wooden gate detached from its hinges and split down the middle to reveal gaping darkness. The cobwebs and weathering suggest that it’s been in such a state for a long, long time. The place had been looted, top to bottom, long before their arrival, that much is clear. A statue of a knight in the altar window stares reproachfully from its cracked visor.

It took _significantly_ longer than a half day’s walk to reach the manor’s catacombs; light wanes from the red sky, the sun already beneath the sea’s horizon. If they go in now, they’ll be exploring the passage at night. If they leave, they risk nighttime ambush by brigands. Dismas realizes for the first time that they are alone, and they are trapped.

It’s Reynauld who speaks first.

“We stay in close formation when we enter each chamber – all entrances are secured first, then we fan out in search of valuables.” He’s got one foot through the doorway already, sword unsheathed.

Dismas has to speak up. “Don’t think we’ll find anything in there, looks like it’s been ransacked a decade ago.” Paracelsus nods, and even Junia looks reluctant to enter. 

“We can leave now and return empty-handed and have to answer for it, or we can enter and remove all doubt. Light forbid you to be this easily swayed by a broken door.” He’s gone, swallowed by the darkness just a few feet into the hallway, his reproach hanging in the air. A match is struck, and he holds aloft one of the many pitch-soaked torches in his satchel. Nobody wants to be left behind, exposed to the night air, so they follow behind him through the smashed entryway.

The open hall gives way to stone rubble, the passable space so thin that it’s akin to a crevasse in a cave, just large enough to walk through, flattened against the wall. The rubble constricts the passage so much so that at points they’re pressed single-file, shoulder to shoulder, to make it through. There’s no way to path around the obstructions, either – the route is linear. The passage occasionally opens into segments of the hallway that are a few feet wide, but then inevitably constricts again like a broken lung. The floor descends steeply into the earth, the rubble overhead bearing down on their necks, one point of light flickering in front of the all-consuming darkness. They’re crushed so tightly against the walls that Dismas has to hold in his breath. The only thing stopping them from going back is the uphill climb, knowing that a misstep could send them tumbling down the fissure to certain death. There's a certain air of fear that settles around the fact that they have to go back up the same way eventually – for now, they can only concentrate on going down.

He can hear the crusader breathing heavily, plate scraping against the walls as he moves. At one point, Dismas nearly slips and tumbles. When he shakily rights himself, he thinks he can hear Junia gasping behind him above the ringing in his ears, drowning above water.

_

When they reach the antechamber after pathing for hours on end, finally in an open corridor, Reynauld is the first to push past the intact wooden gate, slightly stumbling.

He freezes in his tracks.

A relief of a saint carved into the altar has candles adorning the hewn stone steps leading up to it. They’ve been _lit._

“God’s eyes,” he says, breathless. 

Dismas is through the entryway and on the faded carpet, up the steps of the altar. The candles melt asymmetrically, the flame weak. What disturbs him is that they’re unornamented and scented, both unbecoming of the votive candles of the Catholic church.

“Paupers have taken up residence in the chambers. They must be god-fearing men,” Reynauld says, and Dismas is quick to disagree.

“No man of the church uses this sort of candle for prayer.” He should know. But then, why light them at all? They’re both silent, watching the tapers melt into the stonework. 

“What finely preserved skeletal structures,” Paracelsus says, and she’s more careful with the dead than with the living, rubbing one finger along the well-articulated orbital of one of the collapsed skeletons resting in the archways lining the back wall.  
  
Junia is the only one who heeds the crusader and takes watch over the door leading out of the chamber, deeper into the catacombs.

One entrance, one exit, just as delineated by the map. Further into the passage branches an innumerable amount of side chambers and their respective paths, the sheer enormity of the crypts undercut by the single passage they were instructed to follow, hardly a dozen rooms altogether before hitting a dead end.

Junia doesn’t want to think about disrupting anyone ungodly enough to take up residence in an above ground cemetery. She doesn’t want to think about one lone torch lighting up a claustrophobic passage, deep in the darkness where the Light can’t see her, so she’s steadfast in listening for footsteps and watching the plague doctor. 

She wraps one hand around her rosary to stop the shaking.

“It is sacrilege to disturb the dead, physic,” she says, her disapproval masking her fear, Paracelsus tilting the skull downward to inspect the crown.

“Nonsense, they have no need of their earthly forms any longer. In death, they benefit the living,” she says, unaffected. “When I die, I too should want my body donated as a cadaver to the university.”

Junia gapes. “You should want your body to be _disemboweled?_ How can you hope to enter the kingdom of the Light with your form mutilated?”

“I don’t hope,” says Paracelsus. “Because it doesn’t exist.”

When she drops the skull, it impacts against the skeleton’s collarbones, like the Mother Superior’s ruler on an unruly practitioner’s desk – Junia’s desk, when she was just a child.

“You are _damned,”_ Junia says, _“damned, damned, damned,”_ and she’s practically babbling, wild-eyed. “Your impurity eclipses the Light; your livelihood embalms you in pus, and blood, and filth. It will benefit no one to pray for your soul, because you can _never_ hope to enter the gates of Heaven.”

Paracelsus looks at her. “Neither can you.”

A gloved hand clamps down on Junia’s mouth, and Dismas’ voice hisses next to her head. “Hush now.”

Something rhythmically snaps down the corridor leading out of the antechamber, the undulation reaching her ear in waves.

_Footsteps._

_

Dismas sees the brigand in his mind, one dirk aimed between the plates covering the shoulder and neck, Reynauld’s delayed reaction, and sees the two women frozen in front of him. He grabs one of the candles and snakes through the corridor, the low ceiling and walls closing in on him, floor littered with skulls. The antechamber should have been the first and only warning sign for them to turn tail, turn tail and run for safety.

When he was eight years old and newly apprenticed under the local candlemaker, he had watched from the window as the funeral procession for the infant daughter of the Earl Douglass passed by. Dismas was rendering beef fat into tallow as he stared at the rich, all in black mourning clothes, very done-up and public with their grief. Funerals were, after all, for the living, not the dead.

Later, out of curiosity, he snuck out of the shop to witness the wake from a distance, the heavy scent of violet and honeysuckle from perfumed candles hanging in the air, lit to mask the smell of death. The mourners were gathered around a coffin, just a little black thing in the snow. He caught a glimpse of a baby girl, hands folded across the chest, all dressed in white, before the Lady Douglass had caught sight of him and screamed. He had run home, heart pounding in his chest, praying that he wasn’t in trouble for peeping.

The antechamber had reeked of violet and honeysuckle.

Dismas doesn’t say a word when the living skeleton descends on him, bloodied bandage fastened above empty sockets, a one-handed sword raised above its fragmented skull. Not a damn word.

All he sees is a little black thing in the snow.

_

He hears a woman’s scream, and he thinks of how much it sounds like the Lady Douglass. Has she lost another child to scarlet fever?

But instead of a single scream it rings out again, and again, and he hears the breaking of glass, the sound of something bubbling and diffusing.

When his eyes focus, he sees Junia clutching her face as something wet and red blisters her skin.

Something – no, _someone_ is above him, torch in one hand and longsword in another, slamming the blade wildly against a ribcage bleached white. The _thing_ doesn’t scream or show anger, just hollow indifference as its sword cuts just beneath Reynauld’s pauldron. He bellows, dropping the torch.

Dismas is rarely this close to the target, and his hands react quicker than his mind. His fingers wrap around the gun and a point-blank shot hits the skeleton’s head, shattering the skull. Reynauld doesn’t even look down; he’s onto the much larger defender in a second, braying as a swift slam of its wooden shield sends him to the ground. It gives chase, ignoring Dismas in favor of finishing the crusader off.

Dismas puts everything he’s got into the lunge. For a few seconds, his feet are off the ground as his dirk makes contact with the defender’s skull, crushing its mandible and a few of its teeth. It turns to him, as if surprised, and Dismas takes the opportunity to lash out, one more time, straight into the back of its skull.

Some of the bone fragments lodge into his hand from the impact. The defender’s skull is blown out, and the reanimated bones drop, no longer possessed.

Reynauld is still, but he’s breathing. Dismas catches sight of Junia, still screaming, as Paracelsus clutches one of the glass orbs around her waist before shakily tossing it in the face of the reanimated arbalest. It lets out a guttural howl before it drops, frothing bile at the teeth, succumbing to blight. Another skeleton dressed as a mockery of a courtier lies still, glass of “wine” crushed beneath it, chest split open by mace and surgical knife.

Junia is reduced to weeping as Paracelsus pulls the hood off her head. “Stay still, you need the juice of aloe vera. It will soothe the burning sensation.” A spiked herb is crushed in her hand and mixed into a poultice along with other such things in her mortar. “Yarrow and agrimony, infused with rose, to encourage coagulation of the blood.” Dismas stoops down and holds Junia still while she carefully smears the compress on the acid burn.

“Feel better?” She nods, mute, as Paracelsus stands to retrieve her mace and verse book from the ground. 

Junia gasps. “Reynauld.” She’s standing, walking unsteadily to where he collapsed from the blow of the shield.

Dismas doesn’t make it far before he falls to his knees, staring dumbly at the big wet mess that finally seeps its way past his undershirt to his overcoat. 

It registers that he blacked out the first time because of a hit, directly across his chest.

He goes down before he can reach Reynauld.

_

Paracelsus tilts her head to the left, then to the right, sifting through the piles of bones clad in half-rotted leathers and torn cloth. Looting the undead reminds her of her old exploits at the university, grave-robbing cadavers when there was a shortage of them available to students, so it doesn’t bother her much (although none of the cadavers ever came back to life, however briefly). She’s pleased to find some gold, as well as citrine, jade, enameled crests, all of which would fetch a fine price. There’s some curious papers, land grants within the township of Anchester, and she stashes those in her satchel as well.

Junia stands over the fallen bodies of the knight and thief, chanting in Latin over their still frames from the verse book. Paracelsus wants to snort and tell her that it’s doing a fat lot of good for them, but she’s distracted when she pulls the plate armor off the defender’s chest, exposing a mostly clean and intact undershirt beneath.

Reynauld’s arm is nearly severed from his body, and a purpling contusion sits above his brow; Dismas has a deep laceration over his chest, cutting deep enough to fracture the ribcage.  
  
There’s no wood to burn save for the torches, and she needs to keep the two of them warm to prevent them from going into shock before she can mix the necessary remedies for them.  


She sets about quickly, separating every last one of the bonemen from their garments, turning the foot soldier upside down to rid it of its pants.

Junia may be of no help in such a time, but Paracelsus knows utility when she sees it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be updating tags and adding warnings at the beginning of each chapter, although there will be a lot of depictions of graphic violence.
> 
> Paracelsus is the only one keeping it together. She definitely knows it.


	4. Mouth of Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Graphic depiction of psychosis ahead.

Dismas comes to with the realization that the pants of a bone soldier are wrapped tightly around his face, and decides it’s not worth it to wake up. It’s too late – Paracelsus has already caught the fluttering of his lashes while she’s pulling the courtier’s overcoat off him, poultice and bandage at the ready, and is equally quick to tell him to stay still while she administers.

The belts secured around his chest are unfastened, the undershirt bunched around his collarbones to reveal the cut beneath. He doesn’t want to look.

“Well, well. Another miraculous recovery?” Her hand probes the edges of the jagged wound, already red-pink in the center like the meat between marbling.

Dismas stares in disbelief. The cut had to have been deep enough to shatter bone – he had felt the cutlass against his ribcage. The blood saturating his undershirt attested to its severity. It would have taken sutures and many months to heal. He can’t think of anything other than _thank fuck for miracles._

Paracelsus, not one to be outdone by whatever god granted him amnesty, pours a thin layer of oil of anise and binds the wound, instructing him to refrain from laughing, coughing, singing, and crying for the next seven-hour period. He’s distracted by the slumbering form of the crusader, armor set aside and a makeshift tourniquet wrapped around his shoulder blade.

“He’s healed, same as you are, although only about two-thirds of the way into the cut. He won’t lose the arm, at least,” says Paracelsus, studiously looking away from his eyes as she busies herself with packing the poultice for later use.

Junia is propped up against one of the inner archways, and she looks fucking _awful._ It isn’t just the ringed boils on her face; she pales in the flickering candlelight. Slumped against the columns, she’s the figure of the baroque Madonna mourning her son’s crucifixion, verse book clutched between her hands in her sleep.

Paracelsus must have dragged each of their unconscious forms to the relative safety of the antechamber, out of the danger of the exposed corridor. He and Reynauld are propped up against the front of the stand as the mourning candles flicker, exposing the altar’s relief.

“That man is Saint Francis of Assisi.” Reynauld’s voice is ragged, his breathing slow. Speaking is torture to him, but not speaking leaves him alone with his pain, so Dismas listens.  
  
“He was born into wealth, but when he fell ill he looked to the Light for clemency. When he was healed, he gave away all his material possessions and devoted his life to spreading the Light, wearing only the cheapest fabric and belt in his travels.” Dismas sees the profile of the saint in the stone, somber and dressed in unadorned robe.

“See the inscription around him? ‘That there are shadows, I may bring Light.’ It’s one stanza of his prayer; I do not know the rest.” Reynauld’s eyes are glazed over, his breath shallow. Dismas wants to tell him to save his strength, but he doesn’t want to break the spell over the room, candle and torchlight flickering across one safe haven in corridors infested with the ungodly.

“He never wanted to be a saint, even after he suffered for the stigmata. He wanted only for all to live a Christlike life. _Pax et bonum._ Peace and goodness.”  
  
There’s a strange quality to Reynauld’s voice, and Dismas is suddenly worried that he’s listening to deathbed remorse. He sits up before he drops down, startled by the burning sensation across his half-healed wound. Reynauld watches him.

“You shouldn’t have run ahead on your own imperative.” There’s none of the moral posturing behind his words. Right now, he’s just a commander, worried for the well-being of an overzealous soldier.

“You’re slowed by the weight of the armor, and I’ll not let the womenfolk endanger themselves when they need to be at a distance,” Dismas grunts, “and I’m hard-pressed to believe either of them would have survived a blow to the chest.”

Reynauld doesn’t say anything about how Dismas is thin enough that the overcoat drapes off his shoulders. They’re sitting in cordial silence when Paracelsus comes up the steps, cradling tins and loaves of bread.

_

Paracelsus is turning the can in her hands, as if its make and purpose would be revealed to her if she would only inspect it for longer. “A curious object!” she says, and holds it to her eye. Dismas already has his dirk out, prying the lid off a tin of apricots.

The foodstuffs of the hamlet are akin to the diet of the destitute in London, save for the surprising inclusion of a precious few cans of fruit at the bottom of the satchel. Wrapped bread and cheese, as well as flasks of water, are a welcome addition to the meal. Reynauld recognizes the flat tin of sardines and sets it aside for the highwayman.

Dismas wipes off the tip of the dirk on the least disgusting corner of his undershirt (which wasn’t saying much) and stabs it through one of the apricot halves in the thick syrup, quick to grab it with his teeth before it can slide off, before handing the tin to Paracelsus. He’s onto the next few tins and then portioning the cheese and bread, stopping to wipe the dirk on the next least disgusting corner of his shirt.

Lord, but how Paracelsus _eats._ She doesn’t bother with any instrument at all; she tips the can to her mouth and opens wide. Dismas is half surprised that she bothers to chew at all instead of swallowing whole, like a duck.

“Leave some for Junia, would you? Poor woman looks like she could really use it,” is all he can say. 

Paracelsus stops a moment to address him. “She can have the syrup.” She tips the last remnants of the can into her mouth. “She can have the tin.”

Dismas is down the steps and towards the archway where Junia sits, barely conscious. He’s rearranging her portion on the waxed paper when she speaks.

“Is the cut healed? Did the incantations work?” Maybe the acid burn was much more severe than he previously thought, because she can barely speak.

“Aye, I’m fine. Don’t worry after me.” Dismas sets the portion on her lap. “You’ll be needing a change of dressing soon, I’ll call Paracelsus over.”

“Don’t bother. I don’t want anything further from such a godless woman.” Junia’s voice is bitter with anger.

“Well. I’m no man of faith myself, and yet here I am with your victuals, aren’t I?” Her face flushes. “We nearly got reamed back there by the crypt’s corpses. Have a bit of trust in your fellow man, just for now. You can have your differences back when we’re on the surface.”

He’s walking up the altar, listening to Reynauld giving his account of the fight with the bone men while Paracelsus writes it down in a journal, stopping for the occasional bite into her bread.

_

This section of the crypt expands outwards like a labyrinth, but the rubble has been cleared (for the most part) from the corridors. Walking is no longer a climb along a steep and narrow precipice, which allows for some measure of comfort in the darkness.

It’s deeply unsettling to know that they’re up against the _walking skeletons_ of the soldiers and nobility, and Dismas reckons that if he were given the time to really digest that he’d be scrabbling back to the surface in a heartbeat. As it stands, they’re just outside the next chamber, listening to the mindless, uneven rapping of footsteps inside. Reynauld listens closely, and holds up four fingers.

They’ve established some kind of turn order; Dismas is fast enough to dart ahead and get a shot on the closest soldier, which is enough to guarantee the kill. He falls back and allows for Reynauld and Junia to hold back their offensive while Paracelsus throws whatever concoction it is that afflicts them badly enough to have them falling on the floor, frothing at the mandible, several minutes later. Dismas is usually fast on the draw, but with shaking hands he can only reload at a rate of one ball in half a minute. Half a minute during an encounter wasn’t even close to good enough – he does something he’d never consider while on the run, relying on his sword hand to bring the target down. With a plan of attack in place, the next three fights are over with fewer injuries save for a few acid burns and shallow axe wounds.

It’s Paracelsus who thinks to use the skeleton key in the locks of one of the chests; a separate compartment opens up along with the hood of the chest, revealing a glittering ruby nestled inside. Dismas turns it in his hand, admiring the reflection as it catches the torchlight, before stashing it into one of the satchels. He doesn’t catch the glint of Reynauld’s eyes.

When they reach an obstruction of wood and rubble in one of the halls, the lone shovel they brought with them is produced and Reynauld, being the knight in shining armor that he is, spades the wreckage with great difficulty while Dismas fans himself and tells him that he’s a real man’s man for bravely volunteering for the task (which he regrets when Reynauld shoves the spade at him, demanding him do his fair share of work.)

When a decrepit confession booth is found, Junia is quick to cleanse it with the holy water in her satchel before shutting herself inside. They’re halfway through the passage indicated on the map. Dismas doesn’t know how long they’ve been pathing – arriving at twilight and accounting for the time spent recuperating in the antechamber, they’re most likely fast approaching dawn on the surface.

The knowledge of how long they’ve been trapped, so far down into the earth, makes him half nauseous, half exhausted. Dismas has one hand in the pockets within his overcoat, retrieving a small tin of snuff. He empties a small amount on the back of his hand at the base of his thumb, inhaling it in one. Reynauld watches, equally tired.

“What in Light’s name is that?” Dismas grins, handing him the tin for him to inspect.

“It’s naught but snuff, old boy. Try it, it’s just herb. It wakes you up if you have a bit, but take more than a pinch if you want to relax.”

On closer inspection, it really does just appear to be some kind of dry herb. His exhaustion makes him more susceptible to suggestion, and he places a pinch on his hand as he saw the highwayman do and breathes in. It has a pungent, rich aroma to it.

They pass the snuff and watch Paracelsus approach an alchemy table, backed against the columns of the corridor. As interested as she is, she doesn’t touch anything before first disinfecting the flasks and vials with medicinal herb – she holds up some jade and gold, found at the bottom of one of the crushed glasses.

They both stand to meet Junia when she leaves the confessional, some color restored to her face.

_

In a way, the cultists offer a brief reprieve; however disgusting they are, they’re still _human._ Dismas doesn’t stop to consider that it means they’re more capable than the mindless undead.

He crashes into a bookcase, white noise running through his head, when the enchantress wordlessly raises her scepter. Visions of bodies piled high against a cliff face overwhelm his vision, a dead fetus attached to a doe’s hindquarters in the wake of her prolapsed entrails, screaming men trapped in the labyrinth of the crypt as the walls and the rubble consume them, legs first. It lasts for all of a second before he’s back, the flintlock’s payload lodged in the witch’s exposed chest. The hollows in her mask watch him as she falls.  
  
The brawler is atop him, bawling like a stuck pig, his clawed bracer cuffing his side, splitting Dismas’ coat and puncturing the lung. A snapping powder is thrown at the cultist’s mask and he’s on the ground, snarling, momentarily disoriented before a longsword is buried through his spine.

Something _knits together_ inside of him, like the torn muscle and organ is forcibly being pulled and cauterized, and he’s on his hands and knees gasping for air. To call it pain implies some measure of tolerance; what he feels is _agony,_ like something running the edge of a knife against his bones, scraping him from the inside out while he’s desperately pulling breath in through a collapsed lung. When he can breathe again he feels his side, where the gashes have fused halfway. Junia chants, hand held high, verse book opened to one of the pages towards the very back, the whites of her eyes shining in the torchlight.

Paracelsus screams as the other brawler catches her and Dismas is paralyzed, watching the bracer’s claws go knuckle-deep into her thin neck. _She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s gone,_ he thinks, and his heart beats in his windpipe. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

The brawler makes a guttural noise, imitating a laugh.

Reynauld’s spaulders gleam, blinding, the hilt of his sword crushing the back of the cultist’s head. It’s only enough to temporarily disorient him before he turns, tossing Paracelsus like a doll from the blades of the gauntlet. He crushes Reynauld’s hand with a backfist, his longsword falling to the floor.

One massive arm is raised, two forked claws on the bracer up and aiming between plates covering shoulder and neck. Dismas can’t stand, can't run, can’t lunge, can’t make it to him on time. One hand curls around their last torch, guttering where it lies dropped on the floor, pitch dripping down his glove.

He never misses.

_

The face of the brawler is a mess of blood and charred skin. He tore his own mask off to clutch at his face when the pitch dripped down the socket of the skull and caught on his skin, and Reynauld didn’t have the presence of mind to do anything but stare as the man suffered and eventually went still.

Junia’s commune with the divine saved him from succumbing to his wounds mid-battle, but now that her attention is focused solely on the plague doctor he can feel the crushing pain of his sword hand, bones fractured and forced out of alignment, head spinning.

It’s different during a fully-fledged campaign, when the phalanx stands unbroken as an innumerable number of holy men stand shoulder to shoulder, swords at the ready, midday sun heating the helmets and armor to intolerable degrees. Banners rolled above their heads, a testament to the faith. There, he was just one of a many-headed hydra, lashing out in tight formation, shields pressed against the pagan hordes. Here, he fights besides two women and an undersized man, who’ve been burned clean of their strength and conviction to reveal the only thing that remains: themselves. 

He takes his sword off the ground. Dismas saved him twice – three times? – from certain death in one night. He unwittingly took the full force of the ambush by the possessed undead. It’s not a good quality – it’s _heroic,_ which is different from being useful, or intelligent. It’s something, though.

He had watched a thief with dark hair and even darker eyes ram a dirk up to its hilt into the skull of some abomination, blow out another with hellfire, burn an idolatrous half-man to death. In another life, he would have made a damn fine career soldier, if he weren’t among the faithless. And if he didn’t burn the cultist with the last of their light.

When his eyes adjust, he carefully makes his way over to Junia crouched over their physic. This far into the passage, he realizes, a very faint blue-white light cuts through the cracks in the stonework, allowing them to just barely make out the impressions of form and shape. They could all die down here, like animals in a darkened barn, and never see what got them at last.

He listens to Paracelsus’ gurgling breath. Junia’s voice shakes with exertion, as if the Light could smite her at any moment for her frivolous incantation of its most forbidden art. Eventually, her breathing evens out, the blood in her throat draining, but she’s very still.

“She is on the footsteps of death’s door, and I cannot cast any longer. Crusader, you _must_ carry her,” Junia says, and she’s sinking to the floor, beloved verse book falling out of her hand, blood pushing up against her teeth.

The hand on his shoulder could be anybody’s, and he thanks his stars that it’s just Dismas, telling him to come with him as they pass the heavy wooden gates into the next corridor.

_

They walk as silently as they can to the next room over, no more than a few minutes away. Reynauld refused to venture so far forth and leave the other two vulnerable, but Dismas insisted, telling him that he found something important.

His suspicion was of betrayal – did he plan to lead him astray, abandoning the two women in the crypts for a larger share in the looted treasure? Did he bring him away to finish him off as well? Such things were not above the unbelievers, who refused the indomitable moral code of the Light. Dismas had proven himself a worthy brother-in-arms, but he was also a thief, and thieves had no honor to spare. He keeps his left hand fastened tightly around his sword.

All of that is abandoned when he sees the holy fountain in the emptied room, a white marble statue of an angel with outstretched hands to grant divine relief. No darkness can obscure its halo, inlaid with flaking gold leaf. As if on instinct, drawn to the presence of a thing of the Light amidst the catacombs, Reynauld uncaps the holy water kept within his vestment, and gently pours the offering into the fountain’s bowl.

He doubles over in shock, the bones in his hand forcibly rearranging and binding together. 

“Reynauld!-“ Dismas is practically shouting, alarmed.

He thinks he feels pain, but it’s burned out of his mind, taking the bad thoughts with it. Something closes, encircling his head, and when he comes to he knows he’s been delivered.

He looks down at his sword hand, feels his forehead. The Light, for the first time, communed with him. He stares at the altar in wonder, then with utter absolution.

“Reynauld, old boy. Goddamn, are you alri-“ Reynauld raises his hand as if to strike him. He does it with such conviction that Dismas flinches, staring at him in disbelief.

“You’ll not take the Light’s host name in vain, _filthy wretch.”_

Dismas is glad he can’t see Reynauld’s eyes past the visor. He doesn’t know what’s happened to him.

Reynauld turns, making his way past the door and stepping through the hall with a confidence that could get them killed. Not that he cares, in the moment. Dismas doesn’t rush to leave the room.

He watches the altar, still in shock. He knows he’s going mad, because the water in the basin runs wine red.

One flake of the gold leaf drops and disintegrates into the corrosive acid.

_

Paracelsus is propped up and pointing at things that Dismas can loot in the small library. She can’t speak, obviously, but she’s still weakly jabbing at things with one dainty, gloved finger. Dismas, with the image of her neck speared by blades still fresh in his mind, is in a hurry to humor her. Sifting the fireplace ash reveals an immense amount of buried gold, a pile of old scrolls and crates containing glittering citrine. A thorough search of the bookshelf that Dismas fell into reveals several sheets of deeds. A thorough search under the carpet, above the mantle, and inside a skull reveals nothing, however, so he suspects she’s just pointing to point after a while.

With only the last dregs of food left in the satchels, torch and bandage long since used, the sacks are heavy with just gold and baubles. By sheer luck, Dismas finds an unlit torch in one of the sconces, which Reynauld takes from him without a word.

Reynauld carefully rests Junia across his shoulder, Dismas carrying Paracelsus under his arm like a sack of grain as they prepare for the expedition upwards. She’s on the opposite side of where his half-healed wounds are, still seeping blood against his skin. He sets her down to unbuckle the fasteners across his chest and fastens them around her waist instead, linking up to his belt. The gravitas of the action isn’t lost on her – if he loses his grip, she’ll stay linked to him at the expense of dragging him downwards, throwing his weight off balance. She’s pawing weakly at the latches, but Dismas doesn’t humor her this time.

He can’t afford to lose his grip or make a misstep on the passage – it means certain death for the both of them, their final resting places in the heart of the catacombs. He’s carrying her satchel as well, both bags of loot also fastened to his belt. He’s so weighed down that he can hardly stand, much less climb, but Reynauld’s in even worse shape – Junia isn’t responsive, and the armor has to weigh twice as much as he does. He could barely fit through the crevice’s narrowest points during the initial descent.

Dismas wants to cry. He wants to scream, he wants to laugh. His stomach is burning. He’ll have to unlatch Paracelsus to get her through the sections of the crevasse where he could barely breathe, then reattach when ascending the nearly ninety degree drop, all without harming her. For longer than a few moments he envisions dropping Paracelsus, abandoning Junia, dropping the gold and making a run for it, hearing Reynauld’s enraged roar as he ascends the crevasse unencumbered.

The soles of his boots contact with the first foothold, and the motion to outstretch his hand pulls the half-healed flesh of his rib wounds fully open, pouring blood down his overcoat. Dismas feels something wet against his cheeks. 

Reynauld can’t spare the hand to light the torch. They’re completely enveloped, blindly groping for footholds in the dark, heads pounding as they crawl their way out of the mouth of hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've lost a fair amount of heroes during the first few weeks, or at the least they came back immensely stressed and barely alive.
> 
> There are a few things that I'm willing to divulge at this point in time: canned foods weren't invented until 1810, and Francis of Assisi died in 1182. 
> 
> Additionally, Junia's incantation does not reverse blood loss - once the blood is bled, it's bled, and the phantom pain stays. They're all collectively operating on a few pints of blood (total) so they're cold, bruised, and barely able to maintain consciousness.


	5. House of the Yellow Hand

The caretaker stands, perfectly still, in the late afternoon sun casting separated blocks of light into the entrance of the crypt. He used to come too early, or worse, too late, to find the bodies of the hired men and women flat against the hewn stone.

He’s just in time – he can hear the heavy steps and breathing as they come down the open hall. He counts one, two pairs of footsteps, the maddening jangle of too much coin carried for much too long. He wonders which of the four remain.

It’s not much longer until he sees the crusader push into the entry hall, sunlight scattering against the edges of his dented helmet, cradling their vestal like a fevered babe. He’s more than a little surprised to see the highwayman following close behind – in previous iterations, he’s been among the first to go. He lives to die another day, it seems.  
  
Reynauld falters, dropping Junia. She rolls once and lies still. He’s staring ahead, unseeing, blinded by fatigue and the weak light. Only Dismas has the presence of mind to break the silence.

“You’re the bloke who broke the carriage, aren’t you? Take the physic, then, go on.” He’s fumbling with the latches of the fasteners, Paracelsus silent against his hip. He catches her before she drops, leveling her on the floor – he’s quick to follow suit, stumbling as he sits. He’s a bit irked when the caretaker stays rooted to his spot.

Two flasks of water are produced from his pouch, however, and Dismas drinks with abandon. Reynauld drinks reservedly, in meted swallows, and is quick to admonish him for not doing the same.

“You drink like that, you’ll be sick and purge your stomach.” It was a common ailment among the greener recruits, desperate for water after a day spent battling the Saracen armies under the sun. He can’t count the number of times he’s had to say as much to them, and how quickly they’d forgotten about it for the next time.

“You don’t worry after me, knight.” He’d slung Paracelsus’ mask about her neck to ease her breathing during the ascent, and tips the flask to her mouth, watching her eyes for signs of consciousness.

“We’ve got a full day’s walk ahead of us, you can’t afford the strength to pay for your stupidity. Light forbid you waste drink on the ground,” Reynauld says, exasperated. The caretaker observes them as they drink, each exhale rattling against his exposed teeth, before leading them out to the canvassed wagon pulled up front.

Reynauld is right; Dismas hurls out the back when the carriage is in motion and hits a particularly bumpy spot in the Old Road. Water and bile spatter the ground behind them.  
  
He doesn’t say anything, just hands him the flask to rinse out his mouth. Just like he did so long ago, for the young men he’d been so proud of.

_

They reach Anchester by nightfall, the caretaker having relentlessly whipped the horses into a frenzy to speed them along the bandit-infested road. Dismas wants to tell him to stop – he can’t stand the hellish screams of the poor beasts, hooves crushing the forest floor. Junia vomits out the back as well and looks paler by the minute, arms clasped tightly around the verse book as the carriage shakes. Reynauld holds the mace for her, and has choice words about the Light’s call for perseverance, or some such platitude.

Dismas doesn’t anticipate the cluster of townsfolk awaiting them as they cross the bridge, holding lamps burning an oily yellow light through the darkness as they watch. The children, having been ushered off to bed, are nowhere to be seen – a cluster of hollow-eyed men and women stand, and he's floored by their number. They’ve materialized, seemingly out of thin air, like rats from the sewers leading through to the Thames. Much like with the rats, he knows they’ve come to pick his corpse as penance for his arrival.

 _Good,_ Dismas thinks. He’s much too tired to fight, anyhow. Why not let the people have their due, and hang the highwayman?

When he steps foot off the carriage, they’re on him, hands feeling under his overcoat along his ribcage, his thighs, his stomach. Dismas raises a half-hearted shout, even as he realizes they’re assessing the location and severity of his injuries, as he’s not above raising a bit of a fuss at unfamiliar hands grasping under his shirt. He can see the same being done to the women, and he’s quick to avert his eyes.

The residents dissolve to just the momentum of their hands swinging above his chest, a bandage passed between one pair to the other, clear alcohol poured into the clean gauze. He’s asleep on the ground, mouth open, as a horde of faceless people carry him into the lamplit township.

_

Dismas stopped with the proprietary “stand and deliver” line of the highwaymen when he was older, when he could feel that it mattered less and less to him how many men died, so long as he was safe. Too many of them tried to furtively draw arms when his guard was down, and their distance made it that much harder to retaliate without the intent to kill.

He was reviled by his fellow highwaymen, because he had no band and no honor. Worse still, he had no horse, relegating him to a common footpad. He was not the hero that was so romanticized in penny dreadfuls, no Dick Turpin riding Black Apple away into the cobbled streets as women swooned. He was just a vagabond chased by the metropolitan police on horseback, relegated to the most isolated of dirt roads, where the carriages of the wealthy rarely dared to tread.

He was infamous for the dirk among the criminal and common folk alike – it was his signature. Who had ever heard of a highwayman with a dagger, _slitting throats_ like some savage? Whatever had happened to the _gentleman of the road,_ the man who called to stand and deliver and never drew his gun but to take from the wealthy?  
  
Dismas was sorry that he didn’t play along with a caricature of a dangerous man downgraded to the romantic lead in the serials. On second thought, he wasn’t. So what?

He’s sorry for different things. Maybe not the killing in the night, but other things, for sure. He had a band of brothers before. He had _her_ before. But he’s old, and he’s got nothing to show for it. All he has is his rusted weapons, a legacy told through flyers around London bearing his face and the bounty on his head. He doesn’t even have his anger anymore – age took that from him. All he has is the conceit, the water under the bridge, the bowl of soup left on the dining room table for a son who’d never wanted to be a candlemaker anyway.

How could she be a kept woman, when her man couldn’t even keep himself?

“Why are you crying?” Paracelsus has his cheeks between her hands, peering curiously into his face.

He realizes she’s been sitting on his chest while he’s been faffing around, getting himself all worked up over ghosts in the past. She’s got the mask back on, and a spoonful of powdered cinnamon in her right hand.

“An antibacterial wards infection,” she says, before jamming it into his mouth.

Jesus, son of Mary, son of Joseph, he wishes she didn’t do that.

He’s _heaving,_ throat on fire, dry powder getting all over Paracelsus’ robes. She just watches, fascinated.

 _“God’s blood, woman,_ don’t you-“ here he devolves into coughing, “-give me your snake oil!”

It’s the first time Paracelsus has looked genuinely offended – she draws herself up, hand gripped around her spoon. _“Snake oil!_ Your humors have aligned, and this is how you assess me? I’ll have you know, I would have graduated top of my class, had those witless _invertebrates_ at the university-“

She pauses when Dismas starts going a bit blue, handing him some water. It’s only polite.

“Your vigor is restored, in large part thanks to the local remedy. Come outside and have something to eat, when you are ready.” She hops off, satisfied, off to her own bunk to scour her notes. Dismas realizes it’s next to his, Junia’s possessions laid on the bed next to hers – all of them have wisely taken the bottom bunks.

He feels the impression of stitches along his side and chest when he shifts in the bed and the linens touch his skin. His face has been bandaged, although the cuts have long since scabbed over.

Dismas is slow to notice that he feels like _shit,_ but when he does, he knows that his throat is sore, and he feels fevered to the touch. He gulps down the water, before slowing down once he remembers to.

He’s slept through the night and through the morning – it’s actually nearly evening, already. He’s got the covers off, taking his undershirt out of the chest at the foot of the bed. His hand lands around a sachet of gold pieces.

“Your cut, of course.” Paracelsus’ beak has been non-surreptitiously pointed in his direction, peeking over her bound journal. “Perhaps you do not spend it all in one place, now that the tavern has been restored.”

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – he’s out the front gate, fully intending to spend all his newfound earnings in one place.

_

Dismas isn’t quite ready to be accosted by a man who feels to be twice his height and width just outside the door of the House of the Yellow Hand. He feels a little better when he notices the weathered contract in his massive grip, but only just.

“Are you one of the soldiers of this quarter?” The man has an old-world voice, like iron and wine. The fleshy boils along his jawline betray everything he needs to know about him.

“Aye. I’m on contract, same as you. I’ll take you to the barracks, if need be.” He’s never actually seen a leper, not even among the dregs in the poorhouses.

“No need – let’s speak in the taverns, you and I.” The leper pushes past the wooden door, with a command that tells Dismas that he fully expects him to follow along. He does as much, for reasons unknown to himself.

Not much has been done to the outside of the bar and inn, save for the windows being cleared of their boards and rubble, lamps placed at each of their sills. The barkeep watches over the handful of townsfolk speaking quietly among themselves, stopping to watch the two men enter.

The leper waves away an invitation for a drink, so Dismas nurses his stein of cheap swill, listening to him speak. He doesn’t expect what he hears, though.

“I would not have guessed by stature and manner alone that you have come to the aid of some nobleman – most likely unable to make good on his word to pay you, in his current state,” the leper says. Dismas stares at him, not certain what to say. “His attire and the state of the township under his ward – I suspect his line has not enjoyed the privilege of old wealth in many generations. Such as it can be, with nobles.” 

“Aye, so it can be.” Half the damn stein is just froth – he would have a mind to have it out with the barkeep, but the man’s biceps are twice as big around as Dismas’ head. At least, they look to be.

“I see you’ve embarked on the man’s errand, or perhaps, thieves have made trouble for you along the journey. Which is it?” 

Dismas grimaces. “Both.” He empties the stein, and signals for a refill.

“Tell me what you’ve seen.” The leper’s eyes are milky underneath the slanted visors of his mask. God’s blood, the man’s armor is plated with _gold._ That was a surefire way to get robbed.

“Don’t think you’d believe me if I told you. Although the other recruits can attest to what we’ve seen down in the crypts.” One small motion by the larger man for him to set down his glass has him doing so without another thought.

“I have seen Saladin cross the Jordan with _two hundred thousand_ men, and I met him head on before he could reach Kerak. I can believe whatever it is you’ve seen,” he says, as if Dismas should know exactly what he means. Dismas humors him.

“The desecrated coffins of the dead laid empty, and the reanimated bones rose to cut us down, swords and axes and all such,” he says, and he says it in a way that gives the leper pause.

His mouth is back on the glass, drinking deep. “I forgot to mention the cultists, didn’t I? There’s cultists down there. Men and women alike, with books and tables for alchemy, the sort of things only the physic dares touch.”

“But you are well, you and the men who went with you.”

“The _man,_ and the two women,” he corrects, “and we barely made it out with our lives. We wouldn’t have, if the carriage driver hadn’t shown up. I’d be daft to ever venture down there, ever again, back to hell’s keep.”

“I see.” He can’t tell if the leper thinks he’s making this up to fuck with him, but the man stands to leave.

“I am Baldwin, good soldier.”

Dismas extends a shaking hand. “Dismas, old boy.”

_

Dismas doesn’t see nearly the volume of people as he had the night of their return – there’s a handful of Anchester’s townsfolk here and there even in daylight, menfolk in the tavern or women drawing water – but the tension has dispelled from the air. Maybe the town is as tired as he is.

There’s food served at the tavern, so Dismas gets something there, noting that the prices have gone down just slightly since a few days’ time. They’d been gone what, four days? Twice as long a time as the heir had projected for the expedition, in total.

That’s enough maths for him, he thinks, draining the second glass. It was about time to forget all that and spend some time in the void, for a while. One upside to not being as young as he used to be is that it takes far less drink to make him senseless, which he’s remiss to remember when the first glass finally hits.

_

“Excuse me, deary – do you happen to know where the washroom’s at? I _must_ freshen up before I see the town.”

Paracelsus is happy that her goggles obscure her eyes when she looks up from the herbalist’s journal – she’s agog at the woman with the fine blonde hair, from the shovel fastened around her back to the knives hanging from a too-thin waist, the kind that comes from a lifetime of corsets.

A grave robber, no doubt. A rich grave robber? Paracelsus never took interest in the gaudy rings and baubles on the cadavers, but she might now.

She tells her it’s at the end of the barrack halls to her right, and the woman sashays away, eau de cologne on the air behind her.

Paracelsus is up, hands around her pouch of coin, and out the barracks to the tavern in a heartbeat. Such temptations had usually risen when some pretty young thing would come in to aid the chirurgeons during vivisections at the operating theatres – she’d call them ‘surgeries’ if anyone survived them. She’ll deal with the insufferable feeling just as she did before, with heavy drink.

She wishes she could prescribe alcohol on the regular – it’s a fine inoculation for such grievances. Just another way in which the university did not know better than her.

_

Reynauld’s hands shake when he’s praying this time, because he knows the Light hears him. Not that It hasn’t heard him all the previous times that he’s prayed – to think as much would be to _blaspheme_ – but now he knows It has heard his suffering, and aided him in his time of need.

He is ashamed to admit that he did not, and still does not recognize the passages that were read over him by Sister Junia from the holy book. The Light worked through her, and one of Its objects of sacrament. How could he not know Its word by heart?

Junia isn’t in the barracks, Light bless her. The townspeople took her for healing. She had suffered much to close their wounds.

The arches of the cloister open out into the gardens of the abbey, the walkway surrounding the one small patch of greenery within the Hamlet not disfigured by blight.

His grip tightens. He forgets, with the austerity of her face and frame, of how young Junia really is. To be so young, and so accomplished with her commune with the Light… 

The abbot’s hand along his pauldron interrupts his thoughts. The man wears no mitre, no ring, no gloves – but he is an abbot, all the same.

“Speak with me, child.” His hand stays on his shoulder.

“Father, when I was deep in the pits of the ruins, I came upon a fountain of the Holy Light,” Reynauld says, and he hates the uncertainty in his voice.

“I placed holy water in its basin, and it did heal me of my bodily wounds. A thing of feathers touched my head, as though the helmet were immaterial, and my mind was clear.”

The edges of the abbot’s whiskered mouth turn upwards. “Are you not a lamb that has grown under your shepherd, the Light? It hears the suffering of Its disciples, and turns the ever faithful to their task.”

“I am a man nearly of forty years, and the Light has never spoken to me thusly. Not when I was on Its Holy Crusades, crushed under the weight of hundreds of pagan men and hundreds more yet to die,” Reynauld says, and he wants to take back his words the moment he says them. Never has he spoken like this, especially not to the face of an abbot – he would never.

But the abbot takes no offense. His other hand clasps the verse book, open to a page marked by a ruby red ribbon, a hundred times more beautiful than the cheap copy Reynauld had read from as a child, after chores and helping his father tend the fields, when he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open.

“The Verses say that the Light loved Moses, so much so that there was not and will never be a man like him ever again. No man will speak with the Light as he did, nor see the host body as he did without burning alive. You say, ‘why has It waited so long to speak to me?’ when all men say, ‘why will It _never_ speak to me?’” The abbot doesn’t say it as a reproach, but it hits Reynauld like it is.

“I am sorry, Father-“ he says, and he’s on his feet, completely fucking ashamed of himself, but the abbot signals him to kneel at the archway again.

“Moses was afraid to take the message to pharaoh,” the man says, “and the Light told him, ‘fear not, for I will be with you.' But the Light did not have to say thus to you, did it? Because you are as constant as first light. The Light may speak with you, if It so chooses, to lend strength where there is none. Remember that.”

Reynauld doesn’t say anything until the abbot turns to walk away.

“Father?” His hands aren’t shaking anymore. “I purge Sodom and Gomorrah with allies that hold no gods to their hearts. I fear they _compromise_ the sanctity of my mission.”

The abbot’s sandals make no noise on the cloister’s floor as he ascends to the transept.

“One need only to avoid the shadows to stand in the Light, my son.”

He’s gone, and Reynauld’s alone in the walkway again.

_

“’Nother one for _th’ lady!”_ Dismas yells, and his arm is looped around the little woman’s neck as she yells.

“’Nother one for _me!”_ Paracelsus is knackered; one drink and she’s about ready to bring the tavern down.

He doesn’t know whereabouts the leper’s gone (what was his name? Bald-bins? Something of the sort), but he’s having a fine time with just himself and the physic, _thank you very much._

Next thing he knows, some fine piece of ass has entered the establishment, with her own fair share of gold. Awful lot for a recruit who hasn’t stolen it from the pants of a bone soldier, but he’ll not dig too deep.

She must have seen how he’s eyeing her, because she’s quick to nip it in the bud. “Sorry, darling, you’ll not be expectant of my hand. I was a _debutante_ not so long ago, you know.”

Dismas isn’t so low-class that he can’t understand the heavily implied message that he’s too old for her, and he’s a bit less sharp – which is a real feat – when he’s drunk, which means his stein is on the table and his lips are flapping.

“Sorry, love, it’s really _you_ who’s a bit old for _me._ I must have been a right _fetus_ when you first made your debut,” he slurs, and it’s Paracelsus who saves him from being throttled right then and there when she reaches out to paw at the woman’s waist.

“A beautiful toolkit… for a beautiful woman!” she all but shrieks, and if the bar patrons weren’t staring at them before, they _definitely_ are now.

“Right, darling. Easy on the drink, you’re hardly but a pint’s size yourself,” the woman laughs, and she’s more than happy to stay on the bar stool as Paracelsus climbs her like a rhesus monkey to touch her hair.

Dismas is more than a bit cross that he’s lost his drinking partner to some blonde young thing who all but told him to his face that he was an old bugger. First he lost the knight to some nun on the caravan, and now this? It’s sobering, which means he still hasn’t had enough beer yet. The barkeep is eyeing him, as though he’s halfway towards telling him he’s had enough and halfway towards kicking his ass out before he starts causing some real trouble.

There’s a dog now? Yes, there is. There’s a dog now. It’s the kind he likes, the ones that look like they’ve a bit of mustache under their noses. He reaches out to pet it, among full-hearted praises of “c’mere, that’s a good boy!”

“Good _girl,_ sir. And I’ll thank you not to disrupt a police dog,” says a voice above him. Now there’s a man with a severe face, holding back a snarling wolfhound, and he can make out the impression of shaggy blonde hair and gendarme’s uniform. If Dismas was sober, he’d be running out the pub, far from the horses and hounds of the authorities that he’s had such history with. As it stands in his current state, he just goes with the first thing that comes to mind.

 _“You_ have a mustache,” he says, the stupid words just tumbling out of his stupid mouth. He looks at the wolfhound, who bares her teeth at the sight of his eyes. “Your _dog_ has a mustache.”

Dismas looks at the lawman. “Is… is that why you’re together?”

Things get a little blurry after that. He knows Paracelsus is still practically grooming the blonde, but he’s being carried off on the mustached man’s shoulders towards the barracks after hearing something like “that’s enough out of you,” or something of the sort.

Dismas waves to the dog, who doesn’t pay him mind. It sort of upsets him.

“She doesn’t like me,” he says glumly, and the lawman grunts.

“Cosette doesn’t much take to the drunkards we escort home.”

“She’d like me, if she would get to _know me_ ,” Dismas argues.

The lawman cracks a smile. “Is that what you say to all the women, tippler?”

Dismas laughs along anyway, and things get really hazy after that, so he calls it a night on the lawman’s shoulder before they can reach the barracks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've got a few new recruits from the stagecoach - we have a few days until week's end, and each expedition alights on the first day of the week, to give you a sense of dates.
> 
> How do you like Baldwin? He doesn't say much of use in his barks, so his characterization is based off the Kingdom of Heaven interpretation of King Baldwin IV.


	6. Athenaeum

A voice is up above his head. “Dismas,” it says, and then _“Dismas-“_ when he doesn’t bother to turn around. 

There’s a reason he’s lived as long as he has, but in that moment he forgets what it is. His face is crushed up like the ass end of an orange, one arm over his face. The blurry visage of Reynauld looms over his bedside. “It’s _late,_ crusader man.”

“I’m here to make amends,” says the hazy mass.

“I’m here to _sleep._ ” The linens are pulled over his head, a crop of black hair the only thing left visible for Reynauld to make amends to.

Dismas hears the sound of armor and plate contacting when they’re taken off and placed to the side. Paracelsus’ voice can be heard from the other side of the barracks alongside the crackle of fire in the grated stove, the slosh of bath water being tossed off the parapets by other recruits.

“I’ve not been accommodating to my allies, my greatest assets.” It’s not an apology, exactly. Dismas wants an apology. “God’s thumbs,” he mutters, knowing he’ll be chided for it by a man who’s probably only just been able to grow a beard within the last few years.

“All the fool am I for casting the first stone, when none of us walk without our sins.” It’s said as a matter of fact, as if Dismas doesn’t know that.

“I kill men and rob the corpses, Reynauld.” He realizes it’s the first time he’s used his name. “I reckon there’s no judge and no jury that’ll turn the other cheek. Throw as many stones as you like.”

He can tell from the inhale that Reynauld was planning on saying something else before changing his mind. “At least pull the covers down to speak face to face. To hide is unbecoming of you.”

“It can wait ‘til the morning.” The crop of black hair recedes further under the covers, like a cave spider. “Young men have no concept of _time,"_ Dismas says crabbily, reaching down to scratch his balls. “take it from me: let things sit, if you can.”

 _"Young man?_ Well.” He can hear Reynauld adjusting on his bunk adjacent. “I can confess that it has been long since such an address.”

“You’re already a big sort, but I reckon the beard adds ten years, aye?”

Reynauld frowns. “I’ve not thought about it. In my youth, I kept my face bare, but the crusades took precedence over my appearance, then my health. My wife-“

There’s an uncomfortable silence when he breathes in, as if to unsay his words.

This feels like horses running untethered into the night, a pitch-soaked torch guttering on the floor, a little black thing in the snow.

Reynauld stands, the bedframe creaking. Dismas turns on his side.

“Take a bath, old boy. We can talk in the morning,” he says, like nothing just happened, before returning to his sleep. 

Dismas doesn’t want to think about loves lost and years wasted. If they talk, it’ll be about eggs and Anchester and the recruit with the dog. They're his final thoughts before his mind is pulled under.

_

Late August mornings are freezing cold – the heat from the fire seeps into the stone of the stronghold and is quickly lost. Dismas’ joints crack when he sits up, and he hears a man laugh in the bunk above him.

“We are both not as young as we used to be, it seems.” The gendarme’s climbing the ladder to the floor, uniform in hand – the dog is up, circling the foot of Dismas’ bed.

“I’ve never seen a wolfhound forsake the hearth to sleep nearby its master,” Dismas says – bandits kept plenty of wolfhounds to guard the keep, but their loyalty was quickly abandoned for the fire.

“A poorly trained hound follows poorly trained men, in such a case.” The man leans to rub the fur behind her ears, then straightens out to head to the washroom. Dismas follows suit.

He’s woken up early for once, but it seems others have woken up earlier – there’s weaponry strewn across bed sheets and the holding chests, dried witch hazel and bandage left out on bunks of varying levels of tidiness. Most of the pails in the washroom have already been emptied. 

He can still see how long his stubble’s gotten in the water's reflection, however. He’s rubbing lather against his jaw and chin while the gendarme runs water along his face.

“The hound has a more impressive beard than yours,” He says, amused – the dog is drinking from one of the pails. Dismas grunts, producing a straight razor from the overcoat’s pocket.

“She’s got more hair than even _you,_ lawman.” Dismas tries hard not to grin, he doesn’t want to nick himself.

“Did you get that on the heir’s errand?” He realizes he means the scar – he frowns, touching it where it runs across his mouth.

“On the Old Road, aye.” He cleans the blade off in the water, then stands. “Much worse will meet you on the manor’s estate.” 

“The leper told me as much.” Before Dismas can say anything, the man adds, “Soldiers in the crypts, he’s told me – you barely made it out with your lives.”

The gendarme and hound make to leave in tandem. “Your company was ill-equipped to fight career soldiers, but the hound and I have spent a lifetime chasing deserters,” he says, not unkindly. “It may not get easier, but it gets _faster,_ I can promise.”

They’re gone, and Dismas is left with a wet straight razor and a pit in his stomach.

_

The arrival of the stagecoach has revived Anchester – the cobblestones are swept and there’s a proper marketplace in session out front by the river marking the township’s border. Dismas doesn’t see the old woman who sold him bread, but their faces blend into one another’s – he doesn’t remember being quite so face blind. It's just last night's swill, more likely.

The township’s well sits atop a grassy platform made of hewn stone; Dismas sits at its base as he peels open the tab, revealing a neat row of sardines. He watches the bustle of the town square – workmen, hired from out of town no doubt, are repairing the roofing and walls of the House of the Yellow Hand. A band of robed practitioners walk through on their way to the newly restored abbey, townspeople hurrying with their wares and boiled linens and baskets of meager harvest.

Anchester in the morning smells of gutted fish, hot cider, and sausage – kegs are being rolled to the tavern’s door. Dismas cracks a grin; his patronage is singlehandedly revitalizing the tavern. Well, Paracelsus might have a hand in it as well. The abbey’s bell peals, cutting through the early morning air.

Reynauld doesn’t take his helmet off when he ascends the steps to sit along the well’s dais. He’s got a pint of ale in one glove and balances eggs and bread in the other.

Dismas eyes his breakfast. “A holy man who drinks?” Reynauld hands him one of the eggs and a cut of the bread – it’s an olive branch, one that Dismas is too hungry not to take.  
  
“Never drink the water of a foreign township,” Reynauld says. “And it’s not for the purpose of inebriation, Light forbid it.” Dismas wonders what the point is, then.

None of that matters when Reynauld takes off the helmet. Dismas almost spits boiled egg when he sees his face. _"Good god,_ old boy, there’s been a _murder."_

“Hold your tongue.” He self-consciously rubs what’s left of his beard. “I’m out of practice.”

“Did you fancy a shave with the _longsword?"_

“The pagan physic lent me her instrument.” Lent is probably the wrong word - he definitely didn't ask first. 

“You’d best hope Paracelsus doesn’t notice-“

“Notice what?” The hem of her robe touches the grass of the dais, a loaf of dark rye in one hand. If Dismas had any water left, he’d be sweating. Her attention turns to Reynauld.

“Well. You are most lucky that hair, unlike other parts of the body, regenerates.” 

“I’ll not hear it from you today as well,” Reynauld says.

“If you’ll put the helmet back on, we can feed you through the visor,” she says, as if it’s the most natural solution.

“Hand me my _helm,_ woman-”

“Science is about compromise-” Dismas is fairly certain that science is not about compromise, and he’s also suddenly very interested in the sardines.

They stop when the caretaker approaches them, contorted face not giving away a motive. He turns heel to face Dismas, as though his neck were stuck in place, one hand extended towards a point further back past the tavern.

 _The athenaeum,_ Dismas thinks. The heir wants to speak with him.

He turns to look at Reynauld and Paracelsus, who look away. “We’ve already gone,” Paracelsus says, by way of explanation. Her fingers drum nervously on the crusts of her bread.  
  
He moves to bring his victuals with him, but the caretaker moves his head slowly to the right, then to the left. He leaves it on the dais, calling over his shoulder not to touch his share, but the two of them just watch him as he walks.

_

Something about seeing a well-bred man sunk into a chair many times larger than he makes Dismas’ pretense of normalcy come crashing down. There’s a twisting in his gut, the same feeling as when a man reaches for his holster, and he sees red.

In a hair’s breadth he’s got the dirk out and it sinks into half a foot of dense heartwood, no doubt an unfathomably expensive desk. When it comes out it’s leveled against the heir’s neck.

“You’ve mistaken me for a fool.” The heir hasn’t so much as flinched. It just infuriates Dismas further.

“I know no more than you do. I don't ask for any more than you do.”

The knife makes an indent in the skin. “You expected us to die down there in the dark, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I equipped an abundance of supplies and wasted the last of my coin on a fool’s errand.” The heir’s voice goes from vacant to biting. “You’re an _investment,_ you old bastard.”

 _"Two days,_ you said, so we had rations for _two days._ We could have starved to death.”

“But you didn’t.” It’s said so flippantly that Dismas’ sword hand instinctively cuts in – he’s had enough.

He stumbles backwards, a preternatural force pressing into his chest, and he’s knocked to the floor of the athenaeum’s study. “The hell-?” 

“A southern entrance into the crypt’s subsections has been reopened.” The heir continues onwards, like nothing’s happened. His voice is empty of any kind of inflection. “The crusader has informed me of the state of the north entrance.”

Something that the man says sticks in Dismas’ craw as he gets to his feet. “The _knight,_ you mean.”

The heir watches him.

Dismas stays standing this time, one hand on the flintlock. “They’ve told you everything I know, then. Why did you call me here?”

“If you defect, you will die.” He says it like it’s a natural law, as obvious a certainty of death as cattle tumbling off a cliff face. Dismas feels sick.

“Come off it, boy. What’ll you do, kill me?”

“Not I.” The heir reaches under the desk.

He’s running out the door of the study, white noise ringing in his ears. A doe screams as its entrails prolapse.

_

The tavern pulls him in like siren song, like he instinctively knows what’ll kill the sound. There’s a hand on his shoulder when he’s drinking with abandon, rivulets of beer running onto his overcoat. There’s a few moments where he just sits and breathes and looks like trapped animal on a bar stool.

Even the familiar mask of Paracelsus looks frightening in the half light. “Please, I need to see your eyes,” he says, and she obliges.

The world has turned upside down and locusts descend at an Old Testament god’s bidding, he thinks, because Paracelsus is being serious. Dismas is the first to speak.

“Something’s killed him. Something’s killed him and taken his skin and walks in it.”

She frowns. “You’re being dramatic. He might have always been like this.”

“I was with him before Anchester. He’s not the same man he was before. Something-“ he gestures towards the center of his chest, “hit me here, something invisible. Black magic.”

“Smoke and mirrors.” Even Paracelsus sounds doubtful. The world’s gone mad. “Tell me everything.”

“The southern entrance to the crypts is reopened. That, and if I desert, I’ll die. That's when something hit me square in the chest, like so.” She’s writing this down, under a heading titled with his name in her herbalist’s journal.

“You both spoke with him earlier. Why didn’t you _say_ something?” Paracelsus watches his eyes.

“Don’t place blame on Reynauld, I told him not to.” She raises a hand when Dismas tries to speak. “It would be a waste of time to explain an intuition, but we’ll get information out of him if we don’t collude. Each of us are separate test trials.”

 _"Information,_ ” Dismas spits. “He brought me in to scare the living shit out of me for his own entertainment.”

“Not so.” Paracelsus circles something in her entry. “He tells each of us something different. He’s telling us something.”

“Right, that he’s a fucking prick.” Dismas polishes off the foam at the bottom of the stein.

“You’re the only one who’s elicited _violence,_ let’s say, from him.” Paracelsus stops writing. “He threatened you against desertion, specifically?”

Dismas shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “You’re a physic bound by Hippocratic Oath, the other two are bound by the honor code of the Light or some such nonsense. I’m no fool to pretend as though my loyalties are to anyone other than myself.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long time. It’s nearly a half-hour’s time of him drinking in silence before she speaks.

“It’s not what he says that’s most important. It’s what he doesn’t say.”

“God’s blood, woman. I don’t care for your riddles.” He’s drunk, and he's fucking frightened. It’s a pathetic combination, he’ll admit.

“He doesn’t know about the cultists.”

Dismas is on his fourth – maybe fifth – drink. “What does it matter? He anticipated the reanimated undead, sure, but not the halfmen. You miss the forest for the trees.” She has her hand on the stein, bringing it away in one swift motion.

“You must have seen the books in the library, the usual fare for any farce of a nobleman’s manor.” He nods. “But there were other shelves dragged into the halls, alongside the alchemy tables.”

“You don’t mean to suggest the skeleton men were transmuting gold,” Dismas says, derisive.

The pen nib bleeds through the parchment.

“There are other purposes of transmutation,” Paracelsus says.

_

The guild has yet to undergo repairs – in the meanwhile, Reynauld stands at attention, surveying the three men and one woman lined up in front of him in the courtyard of the barracks.

He can say that he’s glad that at least three of them have undergone some form of formal training, no matter how esoteric. He’s most worried for the noblewoman with the cinched waist, playing adventurer in her free time.

She grins at him. “I can handle myself in a fight, deary.” She’s got one hand curled around a dagger. “You needn’t worry after me.”

“Not you,” he says curtly, “but your allies, surely. You’re the weakest link of this recruitment.”

The man-at-arms frowns at him under a finely waxed mustache. “Your duty is to uplift your men, is it not, commander?”

Reynauld bristles. “My duty is to the Light, and to teach you your formation.” He pairs the leper and the man-at-arms together, both career soldiers of considerable size. The lawman and the noble are set together, with the hound tethered a ways off.

“You’ll rarely be so evenly matched in a real battle, but that’s not what’s important for this exercise. You are allowed to spar with only what you have on hand, bar tonics.” He was in unfamiliar territory – typically he’d be watching for form, reaction, and strength in recruits, but that was all for one-on-one displays of swordsmanship – in the reality of religious war, foot soldiers relied on endurance and sheer luck of numbers to overwhelm the enemy. 

Reynauld came out of the catacombs with the knowledge that only two things matter in its domain: speed, and sound mind. 

He eyes his recruits. “Begin.”

_

Bedlam’s broken out in the yard outside the soldier’s quarters, Dismas knows it. Anchester’s townspeople gather, only bold enough to watch from the outskirts, as he pushes past them to watch the four recruits. It reminds him of the exhibition matches in the seedy pubs where he first learned reverse grip, where he earned his first scars as the bumbling candlemaker’s apprentice with a mother and a home, surrounded by orphans.

They were hesitant at first, particularly the houndmaster with the young woman in front of him, but as time wended on they grew bolder. Miner’s pick is deadlocked with lawman’s club, executioner’s sword with heater shield. Paracelsus looks like she’s about to have a fit when she sees the bruises on the grave robber’s forehead. Reynauld paces between them, watching closely.

The leper proves to be the most surprising – he’s nearly ground the older man into the dirt under the unbearable weight of his two-handed sword, a massive instrument that looks more ornamental than functional.

Reynauld holds up his hand. “Yield.” All members step back, all but the leper perspiring.

He has some idea what each of them can do. “I need names before I dictate formation.”

“Harcourt, sir.” The man-at-arms bends slightly, laughing breathlessly. “I cannot swing the great mace as I once could! I’ve forgotten, in my old age, the terrifying power of youth.” The leper laughs, extending his glove to shake hands.

He turns to Reynauld, extending his hand again. “I am Baldwin, crusader knight.” Reynauld makes no move to honor him. The leper’s eyes narrow in amusement.

“Audrey, love,” the young woman says, running her hand along the pick, smiling the way the high-bred are taught to – with their mouths, not their eyes. The last man has returned with his dog in tow, who’s snarling at the noblewoman.

“William,” he says, straight-backed and somber. He’d normally shake the man’s hand, but something about him has his guard up.

Reynauld speaks. “Our contractor selects a troupe of four for each expedition, alighting on the first of each week. It follows that you cannot know when or with what allies you will be fighting alongside during each campaign.” Dismas has one hand to the dirk on instinct, before he shoves it into the overcoat's pocket.

“The first thing you do before each campaign, no matter who is a part of your troupe, is to establish turn order and positioning. The fastest man strikes, falls back. The second fastest man strikes, falls back.” There’s more than one objection to his plan – he holds up a hand. “Let me speak.”

“No infantryman’s stratagem holds against the… _soldiers_ of the crypts,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “There is but four of you – there is no _wall._ You have only the formation, and the turn order.”

“Harcourt takes first position – ready your shield for the first round of attack. Baldwin is secondary line of defense. His offensive requires momentum. Noble and ah, houndmaster,” he says, names already forgotten, “take fourth and third position respectively. The woman takes first hit, then the houndmaster. Harcourt takes third. Baldwin hits last, then cycle the offensive.”

Reynauld takes a breath. “Your lives are on the line. If you have questions, ask them now.”

William squints under the midday sun. “You assume all four of the newest recruits will be assigned to the next expedition. Does it not make sense that at least one of the recruits that’s already seen the crypts is tasked to go with?”

Reynauld turns to look at him. “You haven’t met your contractor, have you.”

“No. Is he a senseless man?”

“I’ve served under many a general who has cared only for advantage, at whatever cost, youth be damned.” Reynauld rests one hand against the pommel of the longsword.

“If it were not a sin to gamble, I would bet with complete certainty that given the choice between familiarizing three new recruits versus four for a lower chance of survival, he’d take the latter option every time.”

A murmur goes up among them. Reynauld’s already got his back to the crowd, walking up the steps of the barracks.

“I recommend you take your rest for now – deployment is in two days.” He stops before he adds, “The abbey is open all hours of the day.”

Paracelsus is already studiously grinding chamomile and flowering wort for bruising, the other recruits disbanding and heading into the township, whether to the tavern or to the abbey.

Dismas heads in as well after the knight. Judging by the stumble, he might just need to sleep off the midmorning drinking.

He stops in his tracks when he sees the ruby sitting in Reynauld’s open chest, catching the light from the barrack windows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who leaves a comment, or a kudos, or what have you. Thank you for giving me the motivation to keep writing! Hopefully, updates can be more consistent.
> 
> Dismas is too much of a dumbo to correlate him telling Reynauld that the beard makes him look too old to the subsequent attempted shave the day after. Thank god he's got the attention span of a fruit fly.


	7. Stables

The jeweler’s shop on Regent Street was on the corner, just one lane across from the physicians’ precinct. The candlemaker – Turner, his name was – had contracted a rigorous case of appendicitis and had sent Dismas to fetch a surgeon so that he could be bled by cup. It’s where Dismas first saw a ruby, resplendent amidst the garish mourning jewelry that had come back into fashion; it was a small one embedded into an acrostic ring, where the first letter of each stone – diamonds, emeralds, and the like – spelled out D-E-A-R-E-S-T, meant for some lover or wife. The R sat center, a king in his court. He had only the image of Turner lying white against his bed – his deathbed, maybe – to take him away from the glass of the storefront.

The ring stayed in the window for years, flashing D-E-A-R-E-S-T from its perch.

The ruby in the trunk was unmistakable, a quarter size of his palm, pigeon-blood red rather than lesser loved colors. Dismas is too drunk to mince words.

“You’re a man of God,” he says, but he isn’t a child who doesn’t yet know what it is when men do wrong. Reynauld follows his eyes to the trunk.

“I am a man, and no more. Who pays tithes to the Church, if not I? Who is loath to partake in base needs when next we fight we may lose our lives for sparing the coin to bring just one more torch, one more bandage?” Reynauld’s unfastening the knee-guards – when he’s armed from heel to crown, he’s more metal than man. It’s gone straight to his head.

“Aye, but it doesn’t stop your preaching, does it?” Dismas takes a swig from the flask, watching Reynauld with hard eyes. He stops unarming to stare at him from the thin black visor.

“Light reward you for the swearing, drinking, and debauchery, then.”

Dismas throws his hands up mockingly, righting himself before he can tumble off the side of the bunk. “God’s blood, man, it’s not about what I want to hear. I’ve long forsaken God and the Priest and the King. Have you?”

Dismas expects righteous anger, maybe with some violence thrown in, but the man just deflates where he stands. “No. And I would be wise to remember that the Light has the power to preserve us both.” He fingers the hunk of ruby before tossing it into the trunk like it’s any other stone. “You may take it to the nobleman, if you so choose,” he says quietly.

Dismas snorts. “Lord, no. I’m no snitch, old boy.” He stands up, nearly tripping over his left foot. “I’ll tell you what’s really a shame unto God, though,” he says, gesturing vaguely at Reynauld’s face. “Let’s get you to the washroom.”

_

There’s a bit of a _commotion_ in the washroom – Dismas realizes when he’s sober that there’s a certain association to withdrawing a straight razor on a man and waving it about, but when he makes his intentions known Reynauld still thinks he’s getting his throat slit, getting a shave from a drunkard. Dismas is the most insulted he’s been since he’s got here.

“I’ve been on the lam most of my years and I’ve _still_ managed to keep myself dashing, knight.” He taps his clean-shaven mug, gesturing for Reynauld to sit on one of the benches by the windows. “What’s your excuse?”

“The Holy Wars, Dismas.”

“Let’s not dwell on the past,” he slurs, rubbing lather. “You needn’t worry for your throat or your ears – I’ve done this many times after a bout of drink. The only things I can’t do drunk are fasten a button and cut the top off a hardboiled egg.”

Those are both very specific things. Reynauld reckons Dismas _has_ done a lot of things drunk off his arse. He’s rubbing the lather over the patches of his beard, then Reynauld feels the cold of metal against the skin of his cheek.

“I’m just as good as any barber – better, probably,” Dismas says, running the razor’s blade close to the skin. “I’m cleaner ‘round the gills. You can go to a proper parlour, right, but some come out worse for wear.” He stops to wipe lather and hair from the blade. “And, I know it’s all the fashion, but I can’t stand the side-whiskers, especially when the man’s got more hair on the side than on the top of his head. Bloody rough to look at, man like that.”

“Not like they’ll serve anyone what’s below the gentry, though. Like the everyman’s not entitled to a good shave.” He spits on the washroom floor. “Fuck the lot of ‘em, anyhow.”  
  
Reynauld hasn’t a clue what the man’s talking about; he’s just staring ahead, eyes half-lidded. Dismas taps him on the forehead.

“You shave _with_ the grain, all ‘round. Didn’t your father ever teach you?”

Dismas feels the jaw under the blade clench. “He did. I’ll not hear anything ill of my kinsmen.”

“No need to get defensive.” He’s finishing off the edge of his jaw with a few last swipes. “One of the older boys at the pub taught me, when he caught sight of me trying to use the sword for it."

Reynauld relaxes. “It’s hardly a sword. It looks to be more of a baselard, though of unusual shape for the hilt.”

“This thing?” Dismas gestures to the dirk in its sheath. “It’s a hunting sword. Supposed to be for finishing off game so as to not waste shot.”

“And has it?”

The good humor from the drink has gone away, leaving him maudlin. “It has.”

Reynauld unintentionally blows a bubble from his nose at that moment, and Dismas has to will himself not to pop it. All men have their limit, he knows – he’s a fool, sure, but that doesn’t make him _stupid._

_

“Ah, Dismas. Help with the water, will you, good man?” Baldwin and Harcourt are carrying pails from the township’s well, Baldwin with two massive buckets perched on his shoulders. Harcourt has gone for just the one, modestly carrying twofold of Dismas’ weight on a good day.

At the sight of him without the overcoat on, Baldwin changes course. “On second thought, there’s just a few pails left at the well. Why don’t you bring them, commander.”

The other recruits are still sparring in the courtyard, Paracelsus and Audrey sitting on the steps of the barracks as the physic is fussing over sheets of brown paper and vinegar – Dismas reckons there’s half a ream of paper on the noblewoman’s forehead. 

“And all I get is the one spoonful of cinnamon,” he mutters.

“What was that?” Harcourt hoists the pail to one shoulder, clamping his free hand on the other’s arm. “Come now, don’t mutter to yourself. It’ll be time for supper soon enough. Come with me and the rest of the men to the tavern for something to eat.” The man doesn’t say _you look like you need it,_ but Dismas can hear it in his voice.

_

The quiet working men of Anchester are outdone by the laughing raucous of the seasonal workers at the House of the Yellow Hand, mercenaries included. The man-at-arms is still in full sergeant’s plate and trappings, although the heater shield and mace are nowhere to be found.

“What is it with the armor?” Dismas slides into the chair opposite the sergeant. “It’s the same with the knight, who wears the thing like a second skin.” Harcourt laughs, deep from his stomach.

“What a question! What is a man without his coat of arms, his kinsmen, his fathers and the fathers before them?” He stops to drink from the tankard, some of the opaque drink catching on his mustache. The sunset coming through the window catches the ale, reflecting red-gold against the table. “You might do well with some sort of armor yourself – the line will break with a man that can be blown away by the wind.”

When Dismas orders his usual at the counter, the man interjects over top of him, demanding he be given twice that amount of bread and fish. He turns to the thief. “No ale?”

“Nay, I’ve partaken already.” Dismas grimaces, one hand to his head, the din of the taverns overwhelming. “I’m much too old for hair of the dog.” William grins, one hand up to signal an order.

“That’s certainly not how you felt last night – two pints, sir.” The wolfhound wags its tail at Harcourt, who rubs her beneath the chin.

“We’re old friends by now, you and I, girl. Surely we’re on petting terms?” The dog pays no mind to him, and Dismas spares the laughter at his sake.

“Women can sense desperation a mile off, don’t you know.” Harcourt leans in conspiratorially, ale temporarily forgotten. “I’ve heard it said that you didn’t hit it off with the noblewoman.”

Dismas doesn’t bother swallowing the bread before coming to his own defense. “She called me an old bugger!”

William snorts. “Was she lying?”

“I wasn’t in the mood to hear it,” he says, picking bones out of the fish’s side. “I was getting along famously with the physic besides, but after she came along I’ve not seen hide nor hair of her.”

“Ah, so it’s the physic you’re after.” Harcourt leans back in his chair. “She’s a bit of an odd duck, capricious in nature, but not bad out of the mask, certainly.” William nods. “Bit green for you though, young man. She’s a student at _universitas,_ no?”

Dismas doesn’t know how to convey in words how he has absolutely no desire to bed a woman who tried to peel scabs off his face, or ate all the damn apricots when he wasn’t looking. He supposes choking on his dinner will have to do.

“God’s thumbs, _no._ She was the only half-decent company here for a week’s time.”

Harcourt grimaces when he downs the dregs at the bottom of the stein. “The zealot didn’t make for enjoyable conversation? Color me surprised.”

“Just about brings the house down each time I swear, although he’s gotten better. Didn’t face proper with Baldwin, though.” Harcourt grunts at that, pausing to take coin from his satchel.

“The diaspora of the leper colonies is to blame for that. Droves of the wretched cast from the townships, wearing cheap plate and given cast away swords. There’s not much for the unwelcome to lose in taking up the way of the sword for glory.”

William frowns. “The man’s armor is plated with gold – was he not once well-loved?”

“It matters not.” Harcourt flags down the bartender, already on his second pint.

“No amount of gold can make him wanted, now.”

_

Reynauld’s on his knees, shaking. The transept’s prayer room is just a few meters further into the house of God, but in that moment he can’t take another step. The votive candles at the transept’s end barely light the cavernous hall. They don’t cast on his face.

“Should it please the Light to make my burden bearable,” he says, but there’s no reply. The ruby falls unwittingly from his ungloved hands onto the floor of the hall. 

When the abbot comes, he does not ask what ails him. He gently takes the ruby from the floor before walking past the isles, disappearing into the heart of the Church.

 _“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti,”_ he hears, echoing through the crossing. The words draw him like a horse to water.

_“Amen,”_ he whispers. 

_

Orion is affixed to the dome of the night sky, timeless. Diana’s chariot runs high as she watches over her beloved, Canis Major and Minor keeping him company in eternity.

Dismas wishes he could have done something like that for her.

He’s sitting up against one of the support beams of the open air stables, an oil lamp on the floor with him. The horses begrudge him their space – there’s but four carriage horses, the other two having run off in fits the first morning of their arrival. All of them are black as sin.

“Orion swam further and further away from shore. Diana, without knowing, shot him through as a show of sport. She’d only known what she’d done when she saw his body washed up on the seaboard.” He says it aloud when he hears someone approaching in the darkness.

“She placed his body in the darkest part of the sky, that his belt and sword would alight into stars in his memory.” It’s Reynauld’s voice. “The Greeks and their pagan gods to explain away the sun, the moon, and the stars. But all of those are of the Light.” 

He stands beside a beam opposite to Dismas. “Do you expect to heal well, drinking by day, refusing sleep by night?”

That rubs him the wrong way. “I’m a grown man, don’t you know. I’m in no mood for mothering.” Out of habit, he touches the scars running perpendicular to his lips. 

“You are my brother-in-arms.” Reynauld’s gotten up, studiously running one hand across the flank of one of the horses.

Without the helm on, Reynauld just doesn’t face Dismas when he’s speaking. Just as well, Dismas thinks, because that last bit was embarrassing.

“The knights of the order of the Cross enter service with beautiful horses, long-legged Castilians with barding of chain mail. When I left, I took with me the one stallion my household owned, our plow horse, with no armaments.”

“Then he died, in the Crusades.”

“No, after. I would have sold him before conscription to the heir, but the wars had destroyed him for civilian life. He was too wild to plow, to draw, to mount. The campaigns had picked his soul clean. He had nothing but hatred for mankind.” Reynauld runs his hand along the horse’s muzzle. “He was close to forgetting even who I was towards the end, I think.”

“I’m sorry, then.” Dismas watches him drop his hand from the horse.

“So am I, for his sake.”

It isn’t said, but he knows the horse wasn’t the only one who didn’t make it home from the Holy Wars.

_

It’s on the eve of the next expedition that William emerges from the surrounding forest like a feral man at twilight after being gone since morning, whooping and hollering, the hound whipped into a frenzy. Everyone’s attention is drawn to the prize he’s got trussed and ready to be dressed and roasted - a wild boar, as big and ugly as they come.

It’s about time as well - Dismas is ready for something more substantial than fish and eggs. Aside from the wolves, it’s the first boar - hell, the first _wildlife_ anyone’s seen in months.

But it’s Paracelsus who sees what others don’t, moments before he collapses - tusk wounds on the lawman’s legs, gored through. She keeps the poultice for coagulation on hand now. Is it fear? Does she even know fear?

“God’s blood, William. If it was the hound giving chase, why did you take the hit?” William watches him, eyes unfocused, from where he’s laying - Dismas lent him his bunk, closer to the ground.

“No houndmaster worth his salt sacrifices the hounds for a boar’s head,” he says.

“Anything I can do?” William grins over the linens, sweating and weak as he is.

“Save some of the meat for me, and _don’t cook it._ It’s the least you can do.” With that, he goes under.

The five other recruits await with baited breath - when Dismas comes out onto the steps of the barracks, he’s almost floored by the tension among them.

He takes a deep breath. “Save a big cut for him, _before_ you roast.” He wants to say _he's going to be fine,_ but the implication is enough for them.

There’s only six of them, but it feels like their numbers are tenfold that night in the taverns, getting in one last hurrah before the week’s end. Nobody drinks in excess, knowing that four of them leave at the crack of dawn, and there’s an uneasiness about whether William is still in line for deployment. But God's eyes, is the meat _good._ Even the hound gets a cut.

At one point Dismas is unsteadily getting up on one of the tables, caught up in the moment, one hand to the stein.

“I’m hoping you’re not disposed to a flowery speech, you lout!” Audrey screams, swinging her own pint. The tavern bursts into laughter.

Dismas felt almost stupid enough to say something sentimental, but the jeer dispels the tension. Guess he’ll have to make do with something else.

“The boar had a better head on its shoulders! Fuck your mother, I’m not old!”

“I’ll drink to that!”

Nevermind, it’s a damn fine toast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a minor retcon from earlier chapters – Dismas would have been apprenticed from 8 to 21 years of age under the local candlemaker.
> 
> Also, I promise we're getting to some actual shit happening, we're not going to be stuck on week 3 forever! Pacing is a major issue. Things will start getting a little faster and more of substance as the plot develops. I'm feeling for what I can cut out and what's really important to the story.


	8. Sanitarium

Dismas props himself up on his elbows. Paracelsus’ robes rustle when she bends over the bunk underneath him; she’s prodding William’s calves, running her gloves against coarse hairs. The dog whines, circling her ankles.

“I’d call it witchcraft, if I believed in such a thing.” Her hands drop. The old man’s snoring, blissfully unaware that his trousers are rolled up. There’s swathes of shiny red-pink running parallel to each other, like the goring happened months ago.

“’Local remedy,’ you said,” Dismas grunts. “You’re the doctor, not me.”

“Dismas.” She says, like he’s five years old. “A parchment cut takes a week to heal, longer for the scab to fall, longer still for the topmost layer of skin to regenerate.”

She can’t see him, but he waves it off anyway. “Junia read something off the good book and my lung got unpunctured, didn’t it?” He wants to act like it’s nothing, like Junia’s chants don’t scare him, like the skeleton men didn’t scare him, like the heir didn’t nearly make him shit himself. He wants to act like it doesn’t make him want to run for it like nothing’s ever done before, like the sheer power of his sarcasm can realign whatever’s gone horribly fucking wrong.

“Junia’s not here.” Paracelsus is doing something with a vial, judging by the clinking.

“Townsfolk, then. Like when we came back by the skin of our teeth,” Dismas says. Like that makes any more sense.

“I _must_ know. Whatever some backwater township has found with such incredible regenerative qualities, I must have it. More than anything.” Dismas rolls over, peering cautiously over the bunk, just to make sure William isn’t being vivisected. He reckons she really would do anything.

“She’s in the Sanitarium, you know.” She pulls the cuffs of his pant legs down before standing. “She’s been in there, in some old abandoned hull that no one’s even bothered to sweep. She’s been there the whole week.”

“She hates your guts. Didn’t reckon you’d care, after what she’s said.”

“She saved your life.” That gives him a twinge of guilt.

“Right then,” Dismas says, and he rolls back around, flipping his pillow. “I’ll go see her tomorrow, provided that she’ll want to see me back.”

He’s sound asleep in moments. Paracelsus reckons that there’s no need to wait until after making amends to believe you’re forgiven.

_

He’s had more to drink than he thought; midday light is streaming in. He was never much of a morning person anyway – carriage-robbing was done in the dead of night, the running lamp like a bull’s-eye in the darkness. Dismas reckons he would have rather starved than get up early for an honest day’s work.

“The leper, the man-at-arms, the noblewoman, and the huntsman,” Reynauld says by way of greeting, casual as anything with a pint of breakfast ale in hand, sitting on the barracks steps. “They were gone at first light, most likely, before any of us woke.”

Dismas feels a bit like a raccoon caught in the rubbish bins, being offered a hard-boiled egg (already peeled, how thoughtful) – he takes it down in two bites. Reynauld delicately proffers a second egg, which is also taken from his outstretched hand as if by a partially tamed animal.

He thinks that if he were an animal, he’d almost certainly be a raccoon. Raccoons could never be weaned of their habit of thievery, no matter how tamed. Jars of marmalade could be pilfered clean by their creepy little hands, lock-boxes and trunks and cupboards ransacked in their wake. They’d eat damn near anything, too – oysters, fried fish, street-ices, pies, pudding, whatever they could get their paws on.

“-wood for the Blacksmith’s forge. They’re rebuilding his workshop, high time they- are you listening?”

Dismas nods, licking egg yolk off his bottom lip. “Aye, aye, forge, workshop. Heard you.”

Reynauld frowns – without the beard, he looks much less severe, a lot younger.

“One of my mates kept a pet raccoon, gave him something to do when he weren’t holding horse’s heads for a few pennies. Someone had brought it over from the settlers’ land overseas as a novelty, but it got loose in the streets.” Dismas grins, fishing his flask out of his pocket. “Tom never did stop it from taking everything he owned. Worse than a wife, that raccoon.” Reynauld grunts – laughs?

“He got right pissed at it one day, it’d taken what coin he’d earned and stashed it away somewhere – so he let it take a scoop of sugar from the bag in the kitchens. Sure enough, it runs to one of the water pails to clean its prize. He puts his forepaws in the water and shakes back and forth-“ Dismas mimics the motion, gloved hands clasped together, “-and poor bugger doesn’t know _what’s_ happened to his sugar when he brings his paws back up!”

“Dismas.” He takes another swig from the flask.

“Hmm?”

“What is a ‘raccoon’?”

“Hard to say, exactly. Looks like a small dog, or bear, but with hands.” Dismas mimes its approximate size. Reynauld looks appropriately horrified.

“But what was that about the forge? Blacksmith’s back in town?”

“Aye, I saw him on my way to Mass.” That’s right, it was Sunday.

Reynauld’s studiously brushing breadcrumbs off his lap. “You should come with, next week.” _If we aren’t sent off,_ he means.

“Hmm. We’ll see if I can wake up before midday, old boy.” He’s squinting at the sun beating down over the courtyard. “You reckon they’ll be alright down there, with the… oh, hell. The undead?”

“They will prevail. Light guides them – it will do for them as It did for us.” Reynauld says it with enough conviction for the both of them.

He stays on the steps for a little while longer, for once not pressed to be at church, but Dismas has business to attend to.

_

The light’s already fading from the hamlet’s sky when Dismas is ascending the spire to Junia’s room. The roofing of the turret has been blown off by some preternatural act of violence, and most of the front and the windows have been boarded up.

The sanitarium really hasn’t been swept in years. His boots leave indents in the relatively undisturbed dust.

Junia’s out of her temple garments in plain white shift. She’s got several lamps burning while she reads.

“Verse XXVII: It’s considered proper to knock before entering a lady’s bedchamber.”

“That’s in the verses?”

Junia shuts her prayer book. “No, Dismas. Do you need something?”

“Are you feeling any better?” He sort of leans against the doorframe, not certain what to do. Maybe he should have brought some flowers in a vase for her bedside, or something.

“I’m well, Light be praised.” She doesn’t _look_ well, Light or no Light. “Who was it who was sent out for… the Estate?”

“Four new hires. Maybe,“ he stops to scratch his head, “maybe I should have been honest about what’s down there. I tried, but I was drunk as a rat that time, so.”

“So.” She turns to look out the one window facing outwards to the central square. “They would have thought you mad. I would have thought you mad. It’s better they see for themselves, what becomes those who turn away from the light of the holy Flame. What abominations they make of themselves.”

When she turns to face him, Dismas can see the full extent of the damage done by the acid. The ringed boils have given way to permanently red patches, skin pulled taught around each burn. She smiles sadly, and it’s a grotesque thing.

“Junia,” he says, and her smile disappears.

“If I am consigned to martyrdom, let it be for something that is not for vanity’s sake.” She touches the skin that’s been pulled tight against her cheek. “Let it be for something that matters, for something that the faithful can honor.”

“When we get back down to the crypts we’ll give those bastards what for. You can be the saint of givin’ them what for.” 

Junia waves him off, as if to dismiss him. “The sun has long set, run back to the barracks now and leave me be. I’ll be praying for your soul.”

“I’ll bring flowers next time. For the bedside – if I can find any, what’s not been ruined by the crop rot.”

“You can keep your flowers. I’ll be well enough to join the others soon.” She’s smiling in earnest now, at least.

Dismas is down the steps, watching as oil lamps alight in windows and along the streets. Anchester’s lights are steadfast in the forest. Diana’s chariot waltzes across the sky, and she sings.

_

“God’s breath. Would you look at that.” Dismas has his undershirt off, staring at himself in the reflection of the wash pail. He’s almost certainly put on some weight by now – Harcourt would be proud. The angular parts of him are covered in meat, and he can’t even see the indent of his ribs anymore.

“It’s all the eggs, don’t you know,” he says aloud.

“Put your clothes back on. No more of your vanity,” Reynauld says. He’s got the older man’s straight razor in one hand, carefully running it along his jawline.

“I’m a vain man, old boy. I reckon all highwaymen are.” He prods his newfound abdomen, a mass of hard muscle and scar tissue from years of fighting in the pits and more years still spent sleeping hard.

“Ah,” Paracelsus says, bristle brush in hand and crushed mint in the other, making for one of the wash basins. “When I first saw you in the town square, I’d seen cadavers more well-fed than you.”

Dismas ignores how incensed Reynauld is at how uncouth, downright profane it is to be unclothed in the presence of the fairer sex (if Paracelsus counted as "the fairer sex"), turning instead to show off. “I said, it’s all the eggs, I reckon.”

Paracelsus hasn’t taken off the mask for her daily teeth-cleaning procedure yet, so she stares at him with her usual birdlike intensity. “Yes yes, very impressive. For a cadaver.” She gives him a clinical pat on his stomach with one dainty glove before bustling away.

It doesn’t knock the wind out of his sails, though. “You hear that? That’s quite the compliment from old girl, what do you say?”

Dismas turns to see that Reynauld’s abandoned his spot by the wash pail. That was enough vanity for one day, it seems.

_

A few days into the week see to it that Dismas rations his leftover coin. It’s almost unimaginable that the innumerable wealth from the crypts, coin in an amount he’s never seen all in one place before, could be brought back, quartered, and already nearly gone. He’s got enough to last him a while, provided he doesn’t drink.

Provided he doesn’t drink? He’d rather starve. Well, he’d done worse before.

There’s a bit of paper and ink he’s taken from the first floor of the athenaeum, to pass the time between wandering the township and doing odds and ends. Every morning’s the same; he and Reynauld, being the only menfolk around for it, chop firewood and bring it back in logs to be quartered again. Then they draw water for the washroom, carrying it from the well, behind the town square, past the residential buildings, up the flight of stairs into the barracks. 

Dismas just about passes out the first time he carries water. He can barely make it off the well’s grassy dais before putting it down with a wet thud, sweating through his overcoat. Reynauld’s already off for the barracks but he comes back with his pail, impatient.

“Where is your mettle? Stand straight, have some dignity.” Dismas stays hunched, gasping for air.

Reynauld stays with him for the four and a half hours it takes to drag each of the pails for inches at a time to the washroom – he stays with him again the next day when his muscles have locked up and ache to kingdom come, and again. He stays with him when the axe handle leaves red-raw blisters against his palms that have to be wrapped, when the whole of his upper body is stiff, when he can barely stand.

This feels like training young knights, just a few years’ difference from being squires, complaining and dragging their feet every which way when it came to swordsmanship and proper form and this, that, and the other thing. It’s familiar ground, at least.

The House of the Yellow Hand is much quieter with just the three of them sitting for supper. Dismas has never been of the sort to turn down food when he could get it, and tonight he’s ravenous. It’s a small grace that he swallows what’s in his mouth first before speaking.

“And what’ve you been up to, physic? Seen you about twice in the last two weeks alone.” He starts talking right when she opens her mouth to answer. “It’s that noblewoman, isn’t it? I bet it is.”

“Audrey. Her name is Audrey.” Paracelsus is picking at her food again. “She was married to an earl, and now she isn’t.” She sounds pleased about the last part, like the cat who stole the cream.

“Aye, I’ll tell you what, old girl,” Dismas says, waving his fork, “noblewomen aren’t worth the trouble. They’re rich, sure, but high maintenance, and they’re capricious. A pet one day, a shrew the next.”

“I don’t mind. Anyway, she may have her title, but not the inheritance. Not anymore.”

“Hmm.” Dismas glances up as Reynauld leaves for a refill on his ale, before leaning in. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she.”

Paracelsus is on guard, suddenly aware of what’s being said. “She is. What of it?”

“Are you looking for a bit of a… eh, what do they call it in New England. A Boston marriage?”

“I don’t follow. And I don’t-“

“A game of flats? Something between Sapphists?” That last one she understands. She’s up in a hurry, chair grinding as she pulls back.

 _“No, absolutely, not,_ I, I-”

“Easy, easy!” He’s got both hands up in a placating gesture. “Mum’s the word, old girl, honest. I won’t tell a soul.”

“That’s not enough. I care not what happens after death, but do you know what awaits me on the earthly plane? Dismemberment, then _burning._ Oh God, they will burn me at the stake.” Her hands are shaking. Dismas regrets bringing it up in the first place, but he knows something that’ll make it even.

“Fine then, eye for an eye on this one. I’m a bit of an, eh… a backgammon player.”

“What? How is that relevant?”

His ears are red now, from the strain of a secret long held and long detested. “An _indorser._ You’re a university-trained woman, all the context’s there for you,” he says, frustrated. “Fine, how’s this – I use the windward passage.”

“You’re a sodomite.” There. It’s out, and he can’t take it back.

Paracelsus stares at him. “But what about the woman?”

“What woman?”

“In your sleep. You spoke of a woman that you couldn’t keep.”

“Aye, it’s true. And I loved her. But men, women… it’s all the same, to me.”

“Oh. Oh,” Paracelsus says, like it’s never even occurred to her that that could happen. “Oh.”

“Right then, no more of that,” he says, because Reynauld’s winding around and he _absolutely,_ under no circumstance, could learn that.

“Never met a pinch purse like the bar keep,” Reynauld mutters, “like I’ve the gold to spare. The church here wallows in scarcity from lack of tithes, but his pavilion of sin grows ever wealthier.”

“If the church had beer on tap, I’d be in regular attendance,” Dismas says, grinning into his tankard, doing his best to mask his nerves. Paracelsus mercifully buries her face into hers as well.

Reynauld’s fit is more comforting than anything that night – the crickets chirp, the wolves howl, the owls hoot, and Reynauld yells. It’s how every mid-autumn night should end.

_

Dismas tans the hide of the wild boar and takes a small cut of it towards the front as payment. He’s sure William won’t mind. What he actually needs is the coarse hairs – horse would have been preferred, but boar is fine, for a toothbrush. There’s a tar-based glue that he bargains for from a chair-maker, at no small price too, and a piece of wood cut thin from the kindling.

He bargains for the ingredients for tooth powder from Paracelsus – two parts phosphate of dry chalk, eight parts powdered myrrh, and eucalyptus oil.

It’s the first proper brushing he’s had in a long while, he reckons. His mother would’ve had a fit if she knew – would have yelled about his teeth rotting out of his head. She was right about just about everything, in the end – candlemaking _was_ danger enough.

He’s halfway around when Reynauld bursts into the washroom.

“They’re back,” he says. There’s no time for any feeling of celebration or ceremony. It’s more merciful that way.

“Harcourt is dead.”

_

Dismas hasn’t been to the graveyard yet. There hasn’t been occasion to, before now. He sees the caretaker, callous bastard hiding his grin behind one hand, and just about swings on him before Paracelsus grabs him.

“He can’t help it,” she says, her voice quieter than a whisper under the mask. “It’s stuck. Haven’t you noticed?” He hasn’t.

The townspeople come in tides, hollow-eyed as ever. In their arms he can make out William and the dog, Baldwin and the greatsword that must be carried separately from his person – they make for the Sanitarium, still unfit to house anyone, let alone the wounded.

The only person who can even stand for the funeral is Audrey. God’s blood, she looks terrible. Her jacket’s torn, her chest a mess of poorly done bandages – she’s pushing away the hands that paw at her.

“Hell’s-bells, don’t touch me! _Leave me be!”_ she’s shrieking, but the tide takes her, pulls her up with them. Paracelsus makes to follow, but they block her long enough for them to have receded just as quickly as they came.

Dismas notices it first. “Where is the body?”

All that’s left in the satchels that hasn’t been taken to pawn off to the heir is the heater shield and mace, a torn unit standard from his chest piece. The shield’s been dented beyond repair, the steel crushed inwards at the bottom, blood staining the inlaid wood. The coat of arms destroyed.

He wishes he didn’t ask. Bile is rising in the back of his throat.

They were trapped down there, tens of miles underneath the surface of the earth, dragging a body wrapped in cloth and rope for hours on end before they couldn’t take him with them any further – before they had to abandon him.

Hours. The only cloth large enough to bind a body down there would be a tablecloth from one of the alchemy tables. One of the dark green ones.

“He’s still down there, then.” Reynauld says. “He’s been left on unconsecrated ground. His soul is trapped down there, with them."

“'Least the skeleton men can't kill a ghost, unless they've figured that one out too.”

Paracelsus picks up the shield – she can hardly hold it for a moment before she has to drop it. “What-“ she says, “-how do we do this?” _Without a body,_ she doesn’t say. _How do we do this without a body?_

“The proper way to have signaled the death of a man in the office of the shield,” Reynauld says, “was to have carried his escutcheon in reverse. And were we a funeral procession of knights, our shields would have been turned so that their broad ends would face the ground.”

They aren’t knights, and none of them have a shield.

“What about the shield – is it buried?”

“Weapons and armor are given to next of kin.” But how can they even track his kin, if he had any? All they had was his name to go by. The coat-of-arms, something with red and white-gold, is crushed and warped beyond recognition.

In the end the unit standard is buried in a simple pine box to ward erosion – the paper of the insignia will no doubt rot quickly, leaving the red-gold of the emblem and the fabric. Reynauld plants the broad end of the shield in the ground, placing the mace across and binding it with rope in token of the Crucifixion. A marker of two planks of firewood, also bound into a crucifix, is fashioned for the “head” of the grave.

Dismas takes the marker to the barrack’s stove, using a firebrand to burn H-A-R-C-O-U-R-T into it in charred letters. It’s the best he can do.

Paracelsus lays down dried agrimony and rose from her satchel. It’s the best she can do.

“We can wait, to have a proper funeral,” she says as they stand there.

“Wait until his mates feel better, send the old man off with one last hurrah.”

“He’s still down there.” Paracelsus is no woman of God. Is she disquieted by his corpse being left among the cultists? Does she imagine them descending like a swarm of rats to desecrate him, make him into one of them?

“We’ll be down there ourselves, soon enough. Reynauld can consecrate the ground he’s on, can’t you? We might even find someplace to lay him down, so he’s safe.” _Safe? He’s dead, you stupid son of a bitch,_ Dismas thinks, regretting that he’d say _safe,_ of all things.

“You stay put, old man. We’ll knock some skulls for you next time we're down there, you’ll see.” Dismas gets up from where he’s kneeling.

It’s almost midnight.

_

There’s more of those hollow-eyed fuckers at the entrance to the sanitarium; they stand very still and make it clear that no one’s allowed to see those inside.

“Junia! _Junia!-“_ he yells to the turret window, but they’re “escorted” in due fashion from the premise.

The forge’s fire burns late into the night, and in the morning Dismas wakes to something heavy being tossed onto his bedside.

“The blacksmith’s mended your fire starter, and the knife to go along with it,” Reynauld says. Dismas picks them up.

“God’s eyes,” he says, and he means it. A heavy oiled pistol sits in his hand, not the cheap rusted thing he’s had for years on the lam. Just about every part – the wood paneling, flash pan, ramrod, strike plate – has been replaced. Dismas cocks it, and the hammer sings when it cracks forward. He grins.

The hunting knife has been polished, sharpened, and plated – he can still see old grooves and nicks in the metal. It’s the only way he knows it’s his.

Reynauld tosses him the rest of his gear; the overcoat’s been mended, given extra padding, and sports a small gold-plated buckle. Best of all in his opinion is the dark red neckerchief, folded neatly atop the coat. He puts it on right away, thankful for the small amount of concealment it offers. 

“I’m feeling like my old self again. Let’s see what the blacksmith’s done for you, then.”

The longsword’s had the same treatment, but the plating can’t conceal the huge gaps and nicks in the edge and flat. The pommel’s been buffed, the guard plated. The coat of mail’s been mended, as well as the worst of the damage to his helm and pauldrons, his outer tunic stitched.

“The heir is footing the cost for repairs.” Dismas stops.

“That blackguard owes it if he wants to keep us alive.” He’s fishing for his tin of snuff.

“Harcourt’s cut must have gone to him. His passing in the crypts is a boon for the heir, now that he doesn’t need to pay him his due.” Dismas doesn't at all like the implication.

“We die if we leave, Reynauld.”

“We die if we don’t.”

Dismas cocks the gun one more time, just to hear it sing. “Every road ends, old boy. Mine’s collapsing on my own terms. Are you with me?”

The longsword sings too, when its unsheathed.

“I’m with you.”

That’s all he needs to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the slang used for lesbianism and homosexuality respectively are period-appropriate for someone living in Victorian London. Including "use the windward passage." Really, it is.
> 
> Also, did you know raccoons were originally endemic to North America and were called 'washing-bears' in the 19th century? Had to do a lot of raccoon-related research for this one.


	9. Gravemarker

Late afternoon sunlight streams in onto the swept cobblestone. Black ink pools messily around the rim of the glass well each time Dismas dips the nib, and Baldwin’s on the verge of saying something – probably along the lines of _have patience,_ only in an unnecessarily artful way, if Dismas didn’t shuffle his papers about looking immensely proud of himself.

Baldwin turns on his side on the infirmary bed to look over at the older man sitting cross-legged on the floor. A little of Dismas’ bravado escapes him when he looks up to meet his eyes.

“It’s just a draft, so don’t get your hopes up. A _rough_ draft,” he adds, resting the nib against the well. He clears his throat.

 

“Something sits be-low the heath  
O’er falls December’s mourn,  
That ask of us what underneath  
Could push from out when borne;

And when She comes, how can I fault  
When Mercy spurned her eyes,  
She stands in rouge, it gives me halt  
To see her unfurled spines.”

 

Dismas shuffles the papers a bit more, rather uncomfortable when Baldwin says nothing. He’s sitting back on the mattress, eyes closed.

“That bad?” Dismas caps the inkwell and makes to stand. Baldwin gestures for him to stay sitting.

“Hmm.” He opens his eyes. “The rose means something different to all who know it – the layman may say that poetry dedicated to the rose has become banal, but the learned man knows different.”

Baldwin’s used to being heard, he can tell. Something about the way he speaks, like a lecturer in the amphitheaters, or at least from what Dismas could hear from behind their doors – closed, to him. 

He rolls onto his back, waxing poetic to the sanitarium’s vaulted ceiling. “Christendom originally abhorred the rose as a symbol of hedonism – its perfume and horticulture were considered heretical. The Romans had roses in their fountains and strewn like rushes on their floors, after all, and so what is beloved by the enemy must be blasphemous in the eyes of God-“ he says, derisively so, “-as the Church wills it.”

Dismas snorts; Reynauld would have a fit over the implication that mundane political enmity would color God’s graces. Or maybe he wouldn’t; who even knew what he thought, anymore? 

“The emperor Nero’s banquets were of such excess that the rose petals thrown from the balconies suffocated his guests underneath the weight of their number.”

“The lengths the rich’ll go to for a glorious death, aye? I’ll finish it later,” Dismas says, wiping the pen nib.

“You write with little concern for the church and convention. Not classically trained, I take it.”

Dismas grunts. “I don’t care for schooling, not that I had any.”

“I don’t believe that to be true.”

Baldwin’s right eye looks like blood and milk, but his left is a clear blue-grey. It’s the first time Dismas has seen him without the mask on – it’s clear his face makes some of the hires uneasy. Something about how he looks beneath the boils and the scar tissue makes something in Dismas’ chest turn a little, in a sad sort of way.

“How old are you, lad?”

Baldwin turns his bad eye to him. “I will not live to see thirty, not that it matters.”

“Now it’s my turn to say that’s not true.”

His eyes turn up in amusement before he lolls to the side, facing away, suddenly serious. “I suppose you should be wanting to know the fate of the man-at-arms.”

“Ah, I-“ He’s thumbing the flask in his pocket, “I’m not the one who needs it. I hardly knew him, never fought alongside him at any rate.”

“He fought well. No few princes would have turned tail and ran, considering the… odds.”

Dismas remembers what he said at the tavern – he’s almost defensive about it, now. “I weren’t lying, you know.”

“I know,” Baldwin says.

“What’d you think’s down there, what's been bringing them back to life?"

“Necromancer,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing. “Behind his servile followers and reanimated bodies, there is a halfman down there in the dark, conjuring his magick.”

“D’you reckon the cultists are helping him?”

“No.” Dismas looks up.

“I’m of good reason to believe they’re using him.”

He’d say something, but Paracelsus shoves the dust pan and broom in his general direction, pointing him to the next section of the Sanitarium to be cleaned; Baldwin watches the fluid motion of his sweeping, eyes half-lidded.

_

It’s Audrey who’s sitting by the barrack’s stove, one hand on a hooked needle – she’s dipping it in the fire before pulling it back through the grate, pressed delicately against the crossed plank of Harcourt’s marker.

“What are you doing?” She doesn’t look up at the sound of Dismas’ voice.

“Your handwriting’s just _beastly,_ sweet-thing. You should have left it to a more refined touch,” she says, and he regrets taking a tone with her when she’s looking this pallid under the firelight.

“There’s nothing I can do for the name, looking as crooked as it is-“ she says, and there’s no doubt that she thinks she’s doing him a favor, “but I can remember what he said, before one of those _spectrals_ got to him.” 

“Old soldier’s lived to a ripe old age, anyhow. No shame in how he went.”

“No,” she says, “no shame in how any of us go, anyway. Shame? What of it? Would you be here if you could feel such a thing?-“ and she’s packing up her dirty tools into an even dirtier knapsack, and he doesn’t know if he’s struck a nerve or if she’s just being honest, or if it’s one and the same to her.

She’s left the marker in her haste – or maybe she’s just sick of seeing it and left in one fat, capricious fit. It’s no matter, not as though he needs her present to visit a cemetery anyhow. Dismas holds it against the firelight and almost drops it on the burner when he sees it.

  


H A R C O U R T THE UNFLINCHING  
MAN-AT-ARMS  
AUGUST 18XX  
THIS LINE WILL NOT BREAK

  


It’s awful ironic, he’d laugh if he wasn’t alone in the room, his childish handwriting staring back at him. He doesn’t bother to stoke the fire when it goes out; no shame in sitting still against the floor, H-A-R-C-O-U-R-T staring back at him. No shame at all.

_

At least the lawman’s made it out in one piece, the hound as well, and just in time for his share of the meat before it proper spoiled. Dismas watches him take his meat raw, same as his hound - curious, really - with no small amount of fascination.

Everyone’s crowded in the taverns before nightfall; there aren’t enough lamps to spare – the caretaker’s not yet back with whale oil from his supply run, and with it the promise of fresh fuel and soap and margarine. What few lanterns are set about on tables cast a viscous color against the wood. Some asshole keeps stepping on the bent floorboards a few feet from the front door, adding the creaking to the sound of the raucous from seasonal workers, in town however briefly for the reconstruction of the guild.

One of them elbows Dismas’ bad side, followed by a snotty _“watch yourself,”_ and he’s drunk enough to have it out with him when William places a warning hand to his arm, and he decides it’s not in his favor to start shit in front of a lawman with blood running into his beard.

William takes another meaty bite and just about sprays Dismas with pinkish water. For a brief moment he sees red wine, Junia clawing her face, before it’s gone.

 _"God’s teeth,_ William.”

“Cooking robs meat of its nutrition, my good man.”

“You’d like to get typhoid, or worms or some such from doing that.”

William eyes him. “Not all of us can live off hard-boiled eggs, don’t you know.”

 _“And_ fish, _don’t you know.”_

Paracelsus drops herself to the bar chair next to him before taking a moment to give him a once-over. Her mask bobs up and down when she sees the overcoat and new belt. 

“Aren’t you looking marginally less poor this evening.”

“Aye,” Dismas says, “and where’s your lady friend?” _Mum’s the word,_ he thinks, but Paracelsus looks stunned for a moment, like she’s still not sure. William cuts some grayish gristle from the side of his steak before dropping it to the floor, Cosette waiting patiently.

“She’s off to attend to her own affairs. But I,“ she says, and she’s got a pair of long, ugly tweezers and a vial in hand now, “have come to collect.”

Dismas reckons she means his soul or something, and he figures it was either her or Satan anyway, but one cold prong slides under the scab on his cheek and plies it off harmlessly.

He can’t see her eyes underneath the ugly canvas respirator but he knows she’s positively beaming. She holds her prize up like a magpie with a piece of silver for their consideration.

“Coagulate,” she says, quite proudly.

“Don’t spend it all in one place,” Dismas says, before his lips are back on his stein.

William raises a brow – not like he’s got any room to talk, Dismas thinks.

He starts when he feels a hand on his shoulder, but it’s just Baldwin steadying himself as he settles into an adjacent seat, turning to face him amicably – “and how are you, old bard?”

 _“Bard?”_ That’s William – _blast_ him. Dismas damn near sinks into his seat and falls through the floor.

Baldwin looks up, quickly distracted. “Ah, and the crusader as well, it seems.” It’s the first time that Dismas realizes that he hasn’t seen him in days, not since Harcourt’s “funeral.”  
  
He’s not looking so well, even with all things considered. He’s sagging in his tabard, dark rings under his eyes. Dismas motions him over. Reynauld pretends he doesn’t see him.

“Brother-in-arms, my fat arse,” Dismas says under his breath. Turns out, the tavern’s not so loud at that moment.

“Your _skinny_ arse, you mean.” Fuck off, William.

“I prescribe… more eggs.” Fuck _off,_ Paracelsus.

There’s something between the leper and lawman, Dismas thinks, the sort of thing that comes with bearing witness, and doubtless too with Audrey if she didn’t make herself scarce.

When Dismas was young, just before he was old enough to understand why mum hadn’t made anything other than cabbage soup the last few weeks but old enough to know it was his fault that she had to, old lady Madame Weddall had a proper _commotion_ over the disappearance of her cat. She had the bobbies at her house night and day, rouge staining her front and kerchief – it caused quite a stir in town. Dismas reckoned at the time that they called her establishment a cathouse after Madame’s white cat – a _Persian,_ whatever that was – that sunned on the porch on afternoons and took its tea with Madame, unlike the other ladies of the house; quite possibly they were envious of her.

He found Pearl miles out from their street weeks later, crouching under a stagecoach parked along a thoroughfare, her fur heavy with wastewater; no small far cry from where she was just the month before, her pride completely gone, and no amount of “here, puss!” could coax her.

She was old, older then than he was, and he learns later that cats run away when they think they’re going to die, only they don’t know what _death_ is – it must be because they just want to be alone, or maybe they don’t want to make a mess of things, and Dismas reckons Audrey wants to be alone.

Harcourt doesn’t come up once in the mindless evening chatter, and he reckons no one wants to make a mess of things. 

Night passes in the dark. Dismas thinks of Madame shutting up shop for the whole week as a mourning gesture, her ladies peeking through the windows surreptitiously. One white cat turned gray under a London stagecoach more than thirty some years into the past. He wonders if he’ll know what death is when he sees it.

_

Dismas finds himself about to tumble out the top bunk (bottom’s gone to William, naturally), but he’s more embarrassed about the fact that all of his joints crack at once in a symphony of old age. He sits up when he recognizes weathered scarf and shift – Junia.

“Up and out of bed – it’s half past nine already.” She pulls impatiently at the linens underneath him, and Dismas just about shits the bed when she pulls it off in one go.

He doesn’t know what to say. “I’m not done with that – come back at midday, would you?”

Junia shakes her head, disapproval on her face. “The _women_ above the tavern have asked for my help in washing the linens of the soldiers’ quarter.” Out the window he can see that the inn, barracks, and a substantial amount of residences have lines out for laundry day, off-white sheets and threadbare clothes hung out to dry. All the other recruits already have their beds stripped bare, their possessions in their lockboxes.

“You sure about touching the beds of the streetwalkers, old girl? There’s probably-“

 _“Enough,”_ Junia’s face is red now, “I purify with due diligence all that comes under my hands. Run off now, don’t get in the way.”

Dismas is just about at the barrack’s entrance when he decides that he misses all of the shots he doesn’t take.

“Junia. Since you’ll be helping with laundry anyway – you mind getting my undergarments while y-“

There’s no doubt about it, it’s certainly the Good Book that’s coming for his head before he can get the door behind him. He realizes that he can most _certainly_ miss the shots he takes.

_

There’s a commotion by one of the lines connecting up to the House of the Yellow Hand.

Cosette is inconsolable; the hound is whipped into a fury, baying, black gums shining wet. A traveler in tatters raises one hand in a placating gesture, William’s heels dug into the ground the only thing between him and certain death. The women with darkly lined eyes pay no mind – each white pair of hands fastens each sheet and dress with due diligence, eyes fastidiously drawn away from the noise.

William nods at the door, but the stranger is too stricken to do anything but stand and stare; Dismas grabs him by the arm to pull him into the tavern, out of sight of the hound. Cosette bays, furious that her mark has the audacity to run and hide; he can hear her pacing outside, nose to the door frame.

“Where you’re going, you’ll have to be quicker than that,” Dismas says. The stranger stares.

He’s got enough time in the day to wait it out, so he orders an ale. That elicits a response, at least.

“It’s hardly ten in the morning. Such drinking in excess makes the organs poorly.” A stupid statement provokes a stupid answer.

“A _thank you for saving my life, Dismas, you’re my hero-“_ Dismas puts on a falsetto, like a damsel in distress, “would be in order, don’t you think?” He’d be lying if he said he didn’t think about Reynauld for a second.

It doesn’t provoke the stranger. If anything, he withdraws further into his shroud. “Thank you.”

Dismas doesn’t ask about the numerous padlocks or interlocked Osmond chains, or the manacles, or the fact that the man doesn’t bother with clothes that aren’t absolutely necessary - other than the shroud, it’s just a torn pair of trousers on him. Rheumy eyes are rimmed with red – from what, he’ll find out soon enough.

“The dog didn’t like me either when I first got here. Just about tolerates me now, when she can smell I haven’t been drinking – worse than a wife, that dog.” Yes, he reuses his material when no one’s about that can say something about it – it’s not easy, being Dismas.

The stranger shakes his head. “I am not so foolish as to think it will ever change its mind, not that it should.”

“Oh? Me and old girl didn’t exactly get off on the right foot, don’t you know. What makes this any different?”

“You’re human.” Dismas’ head turns.

“I have it on good authority, yes.”

“It’s not a _laughing matter,”_ the stranger grits his teeth, “it’s not-“

He stops and just about looks like he deflates in his seat when he breathes out.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”

“Come off it. I’ve _farted_ louder than that, mate.”

The stranger has a mind to say something to that, Dismas can _see it in his eyes,_ but he opts out. He turns the subject to something else instead.

“Our contractor. I can feel it, he’s not human.” Before Dismas can start up again he says, “-that is not entirely true. He is definitely not as you, but he is not as I am, either. But to split hairs in cosmology is either immensely important, or completely immaterial.”

“Sure _you_ haven’t had something to drink, lad? I can’t hardly understand you. Don’t spout drek at me, save it for someone else.” He’s a terrible liar, he is. Dismas just about empties the stein in one swig.

Something’s happening just outside the door – a woman’s voice bellows, _“A BEAST OF THE LAND!”_ as the hound barks and whines, William’s angry shouting – the tavern door bursts open, streaming light onto the floor. Dismas gets an eyeful of furs, boots, red braids. Bone trinkets clattering against her thighs, one calloused hand slamming against the counter.

“THE _STRONGEST_ YOU HAVE, _WINEMAKER,”_ she bellows, before she turns to face the only two patrons at this time of day. “I seek a glorious death,” she pronounces, a mandate unto lesser warriors. Dismas would be quite happy to have a death of any kind at that moment, really, he’s not picky.

 _“You,”_ she says, levying a finger to the highwayman’s chest before she judges, “too thin! And you-“ this time towards the stranger, _“too sad!_ I said a _glorious death!”_ she shouts, as though it’s their fault.

“I seek the _strongest warrior_ of this quarter!” Fierce eyes stare back at them. The stranger’s back to staring again – totally useless, as is. Dismas has an idea.

“Aye, his name is Reynauld, and he’s our very best, he is,” Dismas nods. “A real bulwark of the faith. A true swordsman. Find hi-“

He hasn’t even finished his sentence. The woman’s stormed out the front, stein in hand, the barkeep peaceably polishing the counter. Dismas thinks he sees an _indent._  
  
He’s not sticking around, tavern’s the first place Reynauld will look. He’s high-tailing it out of there, stranger in tow. Might as well make good use of his final hours on the Light’s green earth.

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Titian. And it was… Dismas?”

“You know how to write, Titian?”

The answer surprises him as much as it doesn't. “Yes. What of it?”

“Think you could do a headstone for me when I coincidentally perish?”

“Certainly.” With that, he bids him goodbye, making his way to the blacksmith’s.

_

There was only so long he could cheat fate, Dismas realizes, and the blacksmith’s not terrible keen on having him in his workspace as he pulls a curving blade from the fire – _Paracelsus’,_ it seems, and the fire and soot are reminiscent of Hell’s keep anyway. But he knows he’s proper fucked when he hears a voice at the door, saying that he _only wants to talk,_ and Dismas makes it a while on his legs anyhow before something cuffs him on his bad side and he goes down.

“You’re _all right,_ my good man! Don’t kill me, I know all your secrets!” The last part comes out as a high-pitched wheeze as he’s pulled into a headlock. Reynauld’s fat face looms into his view.

“It was _you,_ wasn’t it. You sent the devil woman to my steps, you _knave,_ you crooked-nosed, good-for-nothing _sot-“_ But he lets go, which is all Dismas cares about really, and he’s sucking in the good earth’s breath of life as Reynauld pins him down.

Something not entirely intelligent in Dismas’ animal brain is just _itching_ to die, though. “You got a _proper shiner_ from a woman though, old b-“

He’s struggling again, thinking _oh bollocks, old lad’s going to finish me off this time,_ but Reynauld lets up.

“You will come with me to Mass tomorrow morning,” he says, and Dismas knows it’s not optional. “You will attend the confessional, _confess_ to your sins, and _come home a Light-fearing man.”_

“Best two out of three?”

 _Oh bollocks,_ but he finds his legs under him, and just about clears the damn forest as Reynauld bellows.

_

Dismas lays listlessly in bed, outfitted with fresh linens now (his undergarments in the same state as usual though). There’s two other recruits he didn’t see come in on the stage coach, but he’ll have plenty of time tomorrow.

 _Tomorrow._ He’s almost certainly on the roster for deployment. On one hand he hopes that they don’t come by a body wrapped in green tarp and hemp – on the other he hopes they do. Least they’ll know the body’s safe then. He can’t even have fish at the tavern without thinking of Harcourt, now. Bring Audrey some news that she sorely needs.

When his mind’s full of unrest, there’s only one thing for it. _“Reynauld.”_ He reaches out and gives the bunk next to his two shakes without even thinking.

“I recall that a certain old man says that matters can wait until morning.”

“Don’t you put my words back into my mouth. We’re certain to leave tomorrow.”

 _“Mmmnn.”_ Reynauld curls back into his linens like a pill bug. “And we have both gotten stronger since last we left. Go to sleep.”

“What if we meet the _necromancer,_ this time?” Dismas sounds like a child with a storybook in his lap. Reynauld grunts.

“We kill him.”

“No imagination, old boy. I say we take him prisoner, get him to resurrect all sorts of things. Mice, and whatnot. Mostly mice. Or maybe bully his knowledge out of him. I should like to have one of his ‘men’ pen my letters, or-“

“A dark art is not a _toy,_ Dismas.”

“Not if you’re a coward.”

Reynauld just about rolls off his bed in an effort to get away, and Dismas decides he’s had enough of being a wanker to him for one day. Besides, he’s got Mass in the morning. Night passes in quiet over Anchester, stars obscured by the waning gibbous of the moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sanitarium's unlock actually comes ahead in this schedule - normally, it's at week 4.
> 
> ROSTER UPDATE  
> Boudica - Seeker Hellion  
> Titian - Seeker Abomination
> 
> Tune in next week to see Dismas go to Mass like a good boy, on top of what I've got ready for the next expedition. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but it gets stranger. Gayer. Stronger. Faster.
> 
> How do you like Dismas using gallows humor when he can't sleep? What an absolute wanker. ~~Love him though~~


	10. Tree of Knowledge

Dismas is up before the sun for the first time in years, fumbling with shirt and belt and thanking his stars that there are no buttons on the overcoat. William turns in his bunk, sound asleep; he can hear a woman snoring – he’s not sure which one, although it could be any of them, really. Maybe not Junia.

He’s tucked his undershirt into his pants and slicked back his hair with water from one of the rain barrels, and it’s really the best that he can do all things considered, but when Reynauld takes him through the east transept he feels an old shame – less strong now than it was when he was a child attending Mass with mother, but still there - and it gets worse when he sees the state of it.

 _“God’s ears,”_ Dismas says, surrounded by wooden beams and smashed stained glass, a hole in the ceiling the size of half the crossing beaming white light and floating motes into an otherwise black chamber. Parishioners stare back at him with their sunken eyes. Reynauld grits his teeth but doesn’t say anything, and this has been his sanctuary but it's just about as bad as the crypts.

There’s a line for the confessional; Junia’s here already, and she’s shaking – he wants to know what she could have done between the confessional in the crypts and now that could make her so sad and weak, but maybe it wasn’t really anything she’d done. Maybe it was just the Church that made them so ill, people dropping to the floor and speaking in tongues, the false witch trials in New England, the pyres-

 _“Dismemberment, then burning. Oh God, they will burn me at the stake,”_ he hears in his head, Paracelsus white knuckling her stein, and if he had any goodwill for anything of God it’s certainly gone by the time he’s stepping into the darkness of the worn cabinet. Imagine that.

The lattice window opens and Dismas makes the sign of the Cross, kneeling, and he says his words in an exhale – “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It is-” he tallies the years before deciding it’s hardly worth it, “-about twenty years to this day that I have last Confessed. I accuse myself of the following sins.”

“Go on, my child.” The abbot’s voice speaks quietly to him from the lattice.

It’s been a while so surely nobody can fault him for forgetting the Church’s conventions, so he asks anyway, just to be safe.

“You won’t get me arrested for any of this, right?”

“What you say is between you and God. I am merely your intercessor.”

“Right,” Dismas says, and the man can't even see him so it shouldn't matter, and he doesn’t even know where to start. “I confess to the sin of theft, to the amount of-“ and this is something he could never tally, could never be completely absolved of in full. 

_”-Thousands_ of pounds, in total, ” he says grimly, “I couldn’t say for certain, between what was in the wallets and pawn value of their jewelry-“ and he’s uncomfortable in the silence, so he rushes through the rest.

“Fornication, couldn’t say how often I’ve committed that one-“ and he gives some number from when he was young and lonely and the whorehouse was just down the street- “and onanism-“ this one gets an embarrassingly high number, the sin of pride and the sin of drinking (both to be tallied for at least once a day since he hit sixteen), sin of leaving the Church for twenty years-

He’s saved the worst for last.

“I confess to the sin of murder, to the weight of one woman and one child.”

It’s a white lie, he’s killed men left, right, and center, but he can atone for that later – right now he needs to be absolved of this specific poison that’s robbed him of years of his life, his sanity, his safety in his own mind.

“I am sorry for these sins, and all the sins of my life.”

It’s why he doesn’t say anything about the homosexual thoughts, the sloth, the blasphemy, the broken promises – he might be here all night if he tried to confess to everything.

The abbot is silent for a moment before he speaks. “I am sorry, my child.” His voice is tight. “You may recite the Verses ten times over for penance of your other sins, but I withhold absolution for the sin of murder until you turn yourself in to the relevant authorities.”

There is no Absolution, no act of contrition that can save him. This was a mistake.

“Go in peace.”

“Fat lot of good this does me, then,” he snipes, before he’s being pulled out of the confessional by Reynauld, who’s red in the face and no doubt heard at least the tail end of his confession. Dismas holds up his hands, all scorn to mask his fear, and he’d say something that could _really_ get him in trouble if Reynauld didn’t point to the knave.

“Go. Kneel and thank God for the Sacrament of Penance,” Reynauld seethes, and Dismas goes to the pews and kneels and thanks God for nothing anyway, just so. When it comes time for Communion he’s smart enough not to partake, and he sits and stands with the rest of the gathered, deaf to Mass. Reynauld doesn’t even speak to him until after they’re out the doors.

“You make it so _difficult_ to save you.”

It’s true, in more ways than one, but Dismas is indifferent. “He’s mad if he thinks I’m turning myself in. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to _try._ Did you bother to listen to Mass? Today’s sermon was on the rewards of Paradise. Do you care?”

“I’m an outsider to them,” Dismas says, and he reckons Reynauld is too but doesn’t want to admit it. “But I’d rather the Pit than be one of them anyway.”

“Say you die, down there,” Reynauld says, unusually loud. “Say that the halfmen take you, drag your corpse into their lair, would it not kill you then that you were too proud to humble yourself to God?”

Dismas is ready to say something honest, but he reckons it wouldn’t make Reynauld speak to him as a man anymore than the other times he's said something. “Right, so they've already killed me at that point in your hypothetical, so I can't feel regret.”

Then William’s there, beckoning him to the Athenaeum – both of them – and they’re making their way up the staircase to the observatory room for a second time, and not even the memory of a preternatural force against his chest or white noise behind his eyes could make him submit.

The heir could kill him right there, right then, and he wouldn’t kneel. Dismas was done kneeling.

_

He feels a twinge of something for the heir the man, not the heir the otherworldly arsehole - in front of him is the boy who couldn’t finish his supper on the Old Road, and he looks _exhausted,_ and Dismas is starting to wonder – what was it that Titian said? _Not human._ What, then?

“There are-“ the heir breaks out in a cough, “-there are altars, in the crypts. Something like this.” A paper is passed across the heartwood – still indented from before – with a drawing of a sheet of black rock with one side polished to a mirror finish in a ringed stand made of bone.

“They’ve been corrupted to suit the cultist’s uses. This-“ he produces three vials, adorned with objects of the Sacrament, “-must be applied to the surface of each altar, to purify them.” The heir breaks out into a coughing fit, reaching into his pocket for a lozenge. “It is imperative that you continue to loot, anything and everything of potential value - now go.” He waves them off, and Dismas is more than happy to leave, before he stops.

“How do you know?”

“Beg pardon?”

“About the altars, how do you know?-“ and Dismas is almost sorry he asks, because the heir’s face twists into something ugly and then something fearful, like he just lost an argument to something that lived in the same space as he.

“They were in my predecessor’s notes. Now go. Make for the supplier, you leave in a half-hour’s time.”

None of them need to hear it twice. Dismas watches the heir, but if he remembers what happened last time he doesn’t let on, and he’s starting to think that the man might have never been the one pulling the strings from the beginning.

_

When he looks up from where he’s hunched over by his lockbox refilling the flash pan, Paracelsus is standing quiet as anything, something shiny in hand – standard Paracelsus, that was.

“You should be coming with for round two, old girl,” Dismas says, pulling the cuffs of his overcoat around his wrists. “Well? Come to wish me good luck?”

“No.”

Well, that settles that, he supposes, but she takes his hand and presses the thing into his glove – Dismas realizes it’s a ring.

“I’m flattered, but marriage isn’t really-“

“Do you remember when I was cuffed in the neck?” He does.

“This ring saved me from certain death. I found it in the alchemist’s set,” Paracelsus says, and Dismas didn’t take her to be superstitious but he puts the ring on anyway. To humor her.

“The _ring_ saved you.” She looks at him as though he’s stupid, and he very much thinks he might be.

“Dismas. Nothing and no one alive can survive near decapitation,” and this is true, but he didn’t want to think about it at the time, still doesn’t want to think about it now. The ring is of solid iron, but heavily rusted. He likes it anyway.

“And is this to keep?”

“No,” she says, “I will be awaiting its prompt refund when you return,” and she’s gone because she doesn’t want to hear _good-bye,_ and Dismas has never said it out loud either, so he lets her go. 

_Good-bye, little lady,_ he thinks. And it’s no fault of his, because he’ll be seeing her again sometime soon, so it shouldn’t matter, should it.

The sun is still low in the sky when they depart from the city limits, tuck and vials in tow. Anchester awakes short of four men making for the Estate in silence.

_

The novice who isn’t William or Reynauld walks with Dismas, wholly unfamiliar to the Estate and the cape surrounding it.

He’s one of two men Dismas hadn’t seen from the newest round of recruitment, and he carries himself with assuredness, his robes so low they almost touch the ground as they walk – a style from Algiers, he thinks, or something like that. Reynauld’s far in front – ‘scouting,’ he says – but Dismas knows full well that he’s not happy with this, and he reckons that what he should be uncomfortable with is allying with someone who murders for a living, but _who knows what goes on in Reynauld’s head, really,_ so he ignores him.

“I come from the House of Wisdom, _Bayt al-Hikma,_ in Baghdad. Surely you must know of it,” the man says, steadily palming a skull with a candle as he walks – Dismas doesn’t ask. He’s happy to wallow in ignorance, honestly, and he likes the man’s accent and his voice, and he’s willing to let a lot slide for a nice accent and a nice voice.

“No, but I reckon you read for a living, and the House of Wisdom’s what you call your study. Little presumptuous, but I admire your confidence.” 

He smiles. “You are correct about the first part, but the House of Wisdom is an academy, and famous library and research institute besides. Public, of course,” he laughs, “otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.”

That piques his interest. “What did you study? Anatomy, physics, medicine?”

The man waves his hand as if to push the words away from his vicinity.

“Heavens, no, boy. I went to a liberal arts university.”

His name is Alhazred, and Dismas likes him almost as much as the dog.

Just arriving at a point where the peninsula is visible will take until sundown. The Old Road winds down a treacherous mountain, the forest pass the only visible break in the tree line as it heads out towards civilization, away from the Estate; the rest of the way on the cliff’s topside is made on foot through the untamed forest.

Dismas is suddenly not so sure of the man, and he should have felt the same for Paracelsus – Junia as well – but he hadn’t known then. He knows now how quickly any of them could be snuffed out, at any moment, for any reason.

“Do you have any idea what’s in the crypts?” Dismas says, and Alhazred nods, sure as anything.

“Reanimated dead, of course.” Of course. “It is jarring the first few times you see them, but rest assured they are as breakable as anything else.”

“And _cultists,_ too. They’re worse than the bone men, don’t you know.”

“Yes. I too know what it is to be reckless in the pursuit of knowledge,” Alhazred says, and his hand clasps the skull a bit more tightly.

“My girl’s awful interested in what you’ve got there,” William says, and the hound _is_ looking entranced by the skull. Alhazred’s unworried.

“She’ll have an ample supply of bones in the crypts – as many as she likes.”

William grunts. “She’s not interested in those, much too old for her taste – that skull there is awfully new, I should think.”

“Cadaver,” Alhazred says by way of explanation. “Obtained completely legally, if that is an issue.”

“She can have a cultist, their bones are fresh,” Dismas says, trying to be helpful.

The walk to the Estate is mostly uneventful. Cosette finds a particularly interesting bit of log. Reynauld stays just out of earshot, clanking and shuffling his way through the forest in an ungodly amount of heavy armor, and Dismas thinks if anything he’s an incredibly good lure for all of the terrible things in the woods waiting to descend on them.

_

The southern entrance to the crypts are, as promised, unobstructed – in fact, so unobstructed that the wall where the entrance is mounted and the other three walls containing the crypts have been completely separated. Dismas is unbelievably grateful that the descent won’t be through a vertical crevasse in the rubble. The entrance hall is littered with smashed cathedral windows and stone ramparts – really no worse for wear than the abbey, all things considered.

Dismas can already hear the padding of something down the halls, and it makes a bit of bile rise in his throat. There’s something that just about hasn’t occurred to him to ask, and it hits him that it’s incredibly stupid that he doesn’t know.

“Alhazred. What is it that you do?”

“Anything you need me to do,” he says.

“Do you have any capabilities as a healer?” Alhazred pauses.

“You could say that, yes.”

It’s good enough for him. They’re making their way down the corridor to the first fight, the vile contact of bones ringing out from the end of the first hall.

_

Dismas doesn’t know what he was expecting. It certainly was not _that._

Clusters of red tentacles break out from underneath the ruined stonework, grabbing the ankles of one of the mock courtiers – for a split second he’s frozen, but it buys him just enough time to lodge a bullet in its skull. It goes down without a fight, staring out as if in accusation.

The arbalest gets two good shots off – the first misses, but the second and third lodge themselves in William’s arm. He bellows in pain and the hound goes wild, making for the skeleton with a single-minded fury – it’s reduced to rubble in moments, though she has trouble making work of a beast that can’t bleed. 

The poor lone bone soldier, dauntless in the face of his companions’ deaths, gets one swat off on Reynauld’s tabard before he’s crushed under the longsword – Dismas makes to finish him off, but it’s Alhazred who yells, hand in the air.

_”Wait!”_

The bone soldier makes for his sword, but Dismas pins him under. He’s a bit out of breath – it couldn’t have lasted five minutes, all in all, and already he was showing sign of wear.

“Put this in his mouth,” Alhazred instructs, handing off a cloth to Reynauld, William lying prone in the hall. Dismas waits, reanimated man struggling against him. Any longer and he'll break free and signal for reinforcements, he knows it.

The skull and candle, so suspect before, now removes them of all doubt; it floats into the air as if cushioned by the negative space in Alhazred’s hands. Red light emanates from the skull’s empty cavities.

 _”Now!”_ Dismas crushes the boneman’s skull against the pilaster.

William’s gaping as the tendrils push outwards from inside the wound, and he’s making to scream bloody murder as they dislodge the bolts and pull his skin taught, _fusing_ him back together, and Dismas sees himself on the floor gasping as Junia’s magick does the same, just as violently to him, only under the guise of Light’s grace. Funny, that. The hound laps his sweat off his face as he yells, worming her way under his head as he convulses.

Alhazred steps back. “You’ve been through here before, I presume – there must have been incredibly good fortune on your side for you to have survived.”

“Not good fortune,” William grunts, still sweating. “Harcourt,” and he’d say more but it’s not the time or the place for it. Dismas reloads – the hammer clicks, ominous as anything when he cocks it, and at least Reynauld’s got his eye on the prize fishing through the courtier’s coat to find bars of citrine, even several of those curious enameled crests, all standard fare and free game for looting.

“We need to keep going,” he says, and he’s out the door into the next antechamber, swallowed into the room.

_

The corridors are getting longer. Dismas lights a torch on one end and it’s already dimming by the time they reach the other, an hour – hours? – later, and even just the _walking_ and the not knowing stresses him out. The hound’s claws click on the stone, maddeningly loud, her head high and tail low. There’s no talking for the most part, either – Reynauld doesn’t want any noise, and he’s the one going first, so Dismas reckons that’s warranted.

He reckons Harcourt went first too, but it’s not the time or the place, and he wants to keep his mind sharp, but the corridor is so uniform that it almost feels like they’ve been walking in circles – he’s certain they have until they sight a lone bookshelf in the distance, fast approaching.

“Absolutely not,” Reynauld says.

“No sense of intrigue,” Dismas says under his breath, then “surely even you want to know,” out loud.

“No,” Reynauld repeats, and he’s already on edge just by the presence of such an innocuous thing as books - "some things _cannot_ be known to mortal men,” he says, and his fear is something old, something all the children of men know from Creation when Adam first ate from the tree of Knowledge, but Dismas just _has to see._ More than anything.

Without thinking, he snatches one of the leather-bound copies from the shelf and opens to the middle. His mind blots out Reynauld’s shout, the hound’s bark-

To the tune of an anatomy book, a study of the four humors, mundane as anything in a library. Dismas lets the book drop, disappointed but not surprised. 

Reynauld’s grasping his shoulders, and he’s _furious,_ but Dismas is just more frustrated than ever. If Paracelsus were here, she’d know what to look for. He makes to stash the book in his knapsack but Reynauld pulls it out, throws it against the wall – 

“It’s just a textbook, old boy, thought Paracelsus would get a kick out of it,” he says, defensive.

“No. No more of this. You will not fill our knapsacks with _useless shit,_ you will not be the reason I don’t come home to wife and son. Do you understand?-“ but Dismas is fed up with it.

“Don’t pin that on me, mate. That’s all you. Your son’s probably glad his fucking nag of an old man signed himself up for bottom-of-the-barrel work-” and William and Alhazred have to keep them apart before things start getting really ugly. The hound circles, growling.

“Come, don’t escalate,” William says, but more gruffly, “he’s right, you know,” and he’s _right_ but this is about being chastised all the fucking time, not about the book. 

Dismas walks away, busies himself with a discarded sack hiding behind the shelf with some gold left inside, and they walk and stay quiet and walk and stay quiet. Their formation keeps tight so that the steady torchlight can illuminate the ground just in front of them and the walking just makes the waiting _worse._

Dismas and the hound feel it before the others.

Something _sucks_ the air in an indescribable way, warping the edge of the torchlight like the surface of water, and a wheezing permeates the air. An apparition, for lack of a better word, materializes, and Dismas is not a coward but despite everything he too is a son of Adam and something in him screams _run, run for your life_ when he sees it.

He isn’t ready to die, not just yet, and not just to anything, but he doesn’t get a choice.

A skull sits inside a massive scold’s bridle atop a cloak of hide and furs. Its empty sockets turn and affix on Dismas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRINKET ACQUIRED: TENACITY RING  
> +10% Death Blow Resist  
> +5 DODGE  
> -1% CRT
> 
> Flavor text: _"Good-bye, little lady."_


	11. First Night

_“BTHNKNAHORR HAFH YA,”_ Alhazred bellows, and the tentacles break the stonework when they wrap around the abnormality’s cloak – the skull snaps and flits, half-here and half-not in its cage, but it doesn’t break focus, and Dismas thinks he’s going to-

”Get _back!”_ That’s Reynauld, and Dismas realizes he’s broken formation for the first time in his effort to get away from the _thing_ , and he’s wasted too much time at the back – the hound tears away a part of the abnormality’s cuff, and Reynauld cuts clean into the side of its mantle; it looks like it shudders, but it’s _always_ shuddering, and it certainly doesn’t look any worse for wear. He gets his bearings back, eyes darting from one end of the hall to the next – it’s just the one between the four of them.

It shudders once through time and space, distorting and burning the edges where the hands have hold on its person, and steps effortlessly from Alhazred’s summons.

It’s just one mistake, and Dismas should have been there to pick it up or do something, _anything,_ but for one moment everyone is out of breath and just _waiting_ for something to happen, and Dismas thinks he’s ready for whatever he’s got when the bastard freak raises his gloved hand but he’s really not.

The head of Harcourt stares back at him, pulled from within the coat like a precious object but thrown to the floor carelessly to reanimate – his half-rotted brainstem is tenuously connected to spine, the ligaments between each disc milky and brown-red. Dismas hears the hound behind him, baying for her life.

 _“God’s eyes,_ begone!” Reynauld screams, and when he raises the sword to cleave Harcourt Dismas almost yells at him to stop, that it’ll kill him-

A blue ether in the form of legs and arms and shield and mace materializes, the mace crossing with the longsword before it can touch organic material and Harcourt pushes outwards, nearly making Reynauld drop the sword.

A bullet makes its way to the skull, and the moment Dismas fires he realizes it’s a stupid fucking choice of target – it nearly phases out of existence yet again but it hits, it _actually hits,_ and the fucker stumbles-

Blue light singes him, and Dismas gapes – instead of cauterizing the sloping burns across his chest, the light peels him open, blood spurting, and Harcourt’s staring at him – and Junia?-

“Run, brother!” William yells, and the dog is wrenching Harcourt’s spine but he’s just standing there, he’s not _doing anything-_

“Don’t bother! The skull’s the one you want!” Dismas yells, and Reynauld stumbles, clutching his head as the thing pulls its cloak apart, revealing the dried mass of spine and skull glued together like brick and mortar, but he’s back on his feet in a second, screaming. _“Break his guard!”_

Alhazred pulls his summons tight around Junia’s spine and she struggles and Dismas can’t breathe in the seconds that it takes for him to plunge the shortsword into the scold’s bridle, the skull phasing into the sword’s blade before splitting down the middle.

It wheezes, its mass taken out of the hall space in seconds as it pulls itself out of the world, dark matter throwing him to the floor. Dismas thinks he hears something crack, but he also thinks he hears screaming, and water rushing, and-

Reynauld’s crushed Harcourt under the pommel before finishing him off, a blow to the eye dissipating the blue energy and crumpling him into a desiccated spine on the floor. Junia makes as if to scream when William plies her brain stem from the back of her head with his hands, but all she can manage is a husking sound before she dies – in earnest, this time, he thinks. He hopes.

“Junia,” Dismas says, and he’s hardly noticed that he’s not bleeding quite so much anymore, skin too tight around his middle. “You killed her.”

“That thing is not who you think it is,” Alhazred says, “it may have been in another time and another place. Not now.”

“Of course you know,” Reynauld says, nose bleeding into his mouth, “You conspire with them. Is this what you wanted? They took a good woman for their army of darkness, didn’t even wait until the meat rotted off her bones-“

“Oh, _shut up,”_ Dismas says, and for once he obeys.

“See for yourself,” Alhazred says, picking up a bloodied satchel that had been thrown against the wall with the thing’s departure. “It’s left you one from its collection.” He gingerly pulls the top down around the chin of Harcourt’s head, a grotesque puppet in its case. His good eye, the one not under the patch, is still wet under the torchlight.

“Oh Harcourt,” William says, and the poor man’s heart is breaking, and Alhazred has the good sense to cover it quick. Dismas finds that when he heaves, his skin pulls back apart a bit.

“God’s tongue. It can’t be, the man's over _there,”_ Dismas says, and he looks again – just to make sure – that the spine corpse on the ground still has its head safely fastened on, and he's scared of the heir but he’s _shit scared_ of any preternatural thing that could duplicate men at will, and something occurs to him.

“That’s him, isn’t it? That’s the necromancer what’s been causing all the trouble.”

“No,” Alhazred says, studiously shuffling the bag in his hands, “more than one entity holds dominion in the crypts, and this-“ he holds up the head, “-is your man. The one on the ground is much too old – see how dried they both are? This one must have been added no more than a week ago.”

Dismas doesn’t like how he says it, like they should all know what he’s talking about. “Don’t beat around the bush – what is that?-“ recalling something from some murder mystery penny dreadful, “is that a doppelgänger?”

Alhazred hesitates. “Yes,” he says, “from a doppelgänger time, living a doppelgänger life, only – it can’t be the same, you know, so.” Reynauld grabs the sack.

“Enough of this heathen nonsense. When we find the rest of his body, we’ll reunite him with his head for a Christian burial,” Reynauld says pointedly, holstering the satchel’s tie to his belt, and Dismas wonders exactly how much of that his pea brain was able to absorb. Doubtless he should have more questions than this.

“We have to keep moving,” William says, composure restored, so they do.

_

“Stop that,” Dismas says, knowing full well that he’s being petty, but it gets worse the longer they go on. Harcourt’s head makes an awful muted slapping noise against Reynauld’s hip when he walks, and it’s fucking gross, and he has a right to say something about it.

“Would you rather carry it?” Reynauld snaps, and he’s still shaken by the sight of Junia on the enemy’s line, and Dismas wonders if he thinks that means just about anyone could be taken.

Dismas is about to say _yes,_ in a very sincere and not at all childish way, but William says _”Enough,”_ so they shut up.

When they come up on a trap that spans the width of the hall, concealed not-so-cleverly below a rusted pressure plate, Dismas is the first to brush past - "Allow me,” he says, one hand to the exposed spring mechanism at its edge, before jumping three feet in the air as bloodied metal spikes push upwards from the plate. He studies the bit of glove and skin shorn from his hand - some disbelief, some overconfidence.

“Ladies first,” he says, stepping away from the trap with his hand behind his back in mock courtesy, and it’s obviously meant for Reynauld but Alhazred pointedly steps foot first.

“Get back in formation,” Reynauld says, and Dismas complies, if only because he doesn’t want to be first in line to get his shit kicked in by the walking dead. He’d gladly take it for the good doctor, or Junia, or even poor boy in the taverns who didn’t look fit to fight a cat, but everyone in this party has a leg up on him – Reynauld in full armor, Alhazred with the eldritch powers from beyond the realm of human comprehension, and William with the dog.

That doesn’t stop him from moving in to rummage the sarcophagus lying half-entombed in the crypt’s wall, and even Alhazred makes a noise of disapproval – Dismas waves his hand in front of the suit of armor’s face before realizing it’s an ornament.

“Look, it’s slightly ajar,” Dismas says, gesturing at the lid as he pushes it back. “If he didn’t want anyone snooping around, he should’ve put hosiery on the handle,” and there’s plenty of gold and a bust to spare in the coffin.

He turns the sculpture in the torchlight, remarking, “he’s a coiffed prick, isn’t he? Looks like our man, though, no doubt.” It’s as heavy as a stack of gold in his knapsack.

The next chamber lands them at the top of a staircase descending deeper into the crypts, partially crumbled arches holding up the vaulted ceiling and a locked strongbox sitting by one of the drains, and if Dismas thought the gold was impressive then it’s nothing compared to the massive sapphire nestled in the hidden compartment.

Reynauld lets out a low whistle. “How much is a stone this size sold for?”

“Good-sized one, maybe one to two carats, fetches three to seven pound one shilling and pence to spare,” Dismas says. “This one’s easily eleven pound and hefty change,” but he knows it’s still worth less than the ruby in Reynauld’s lockbox.

He hears the hound’s baying from outside the gallery a moment too late – he doesn’t even notice the man behind him until he’s got his shortsword to his neck.

_

His first instinct is to drop the sapphire, but the man only laughs – his breath is disgusting, and Dismas can feel his heart beating against the lesions on his chest.

Reynauld hastily discards his torch, lights a new one to better frame the man and the men in his party who emerge like rats from behind the arches, and their colors make Dismas’ breath hitch: hunter green, same as the ones on the Old Road.

The brigand holding Dismas hostage speaks first.

“We saw him on route to the township.” He pulls Dismas’ kerchief down, pressing the edge into his bare neck.

“Our lordship saw fit to send his replacement – we’re not fucking stupid.” The man puts his whiskered mouth up to his ear. “And just like his old man, he can’t pay up, isn’t that right.”

“Aye,” Dismas says, “but he’s got legal rights to what’s on the Estate-“

“Legal rights!” The man barks when he laughs, but his companions remain silent. He laughs so hard he cranes his head off to the side, cutting into Dismas’ neck before he sobers.

“Legal rights,” he repeats, “the footpad’s here to lecture us about _legal rights.”_

“His life for the stone and all the gold,” William says, but the fusilier pistol-whips him with the back of his musket – they’re surrounded.

“Oh no,” the man says, “we’re done negotiating. But I’ll make _you_ an offer,” and this one’s directed to the man under his knife – “you’re one of us, aren’t you, and we could use a man to replace the ones you took on the Old Road. You'll get your cut, same as any of VVulf's men, if you can prove your worth,” and that’s bad enough, but what he says next seals the deal.

“Red is not your color. What say you, brother?”

Dismas grabs his wrist in one motion, pushing his elbow down to his chest and throwing him to the floor – the man scrabbles for his neck before Dismas fishes his own shortsword out, stabbing wildly into the heavy neckpiece – 

The fusilier gets a sloppy shot off on him, clipping Dismas in the shoulder before Reynauld guts him, and the dog keeps the other brigands from advancing for a few seconds – but it’s really the tentacles sprouting from the ceiling like hookworms that sends them scattering. Footsteps thunder on the stonework to the calls of “away, away!” until the archway is silent again, save for Alhazred's screaming.

One of the fuckers got him bad, missed the eye but punctured his mouth and took his teeth, and the masses of smooth feelers that try to stretch his skin together end up tearing the edges even further, pulling more teeth out of place; Reynauld wraps a bandage around his cheek, trying to avoid wrapping over his nose and mouth, and Alhazred keeps gasping like a stuck pig.

“It must be far past midnight,” Dismas says hurriedly, putting pressure on Alhazred's face, “let’s make for camp, at least now.” He pulls his neckerchief up over the neck wound, but his shoulder needs whiskey and bandage.

“We’re hardly two rooms out from the entrance,” Reynauld says.

“These corridors connecting up to the antechamber are the longest,” Dismas says, hoping he doesn't call his bluff, “we have to make camp – each room from now onwards is teeming with skeletons and cultists. One or two more rooms out from this connecting hall is the safest; that’s how close the bandits dare to get. Any closer and we risk the skeleton men.”

“Is that what you call safe, proximity to the bandits?”

 _“Yes,”_ Dismas says, “they’re human. They’re scared of the halfmen’s magick-“ he gestures to the skull and candle, “and what’s more, they’re scared of rabies and risk of infection. We can handle bandits.”

Reynauld turns. “Houndsman?”

“He’s right,” William says. “I’ve hunted plenty of petty thieves. We’ll be safe for the night.” He nods towards Alhazred, "Give the poor man some rest."

William drags the ailing man with them as they make for whatever room they can find, Dismas compulsively flinging open doors before Reynauld can catch up – most of the rooms are drainage, blood pooling behind stacks of skulls wedged between the grate, but one of the storage rooms breaks open into a private library where William can set him down on the threadbare rug.

Reynauld looks as if he’s ready to protest, but Dismas puts the kindling in the fireplace and unwraps the wax paper on the cheese and all his fight leaves him.  
  
William takes first watch. Their party makes to lay low.

First night.

_

Reynauld waits until after he’s swallowed his bread to speak. “What penance did the parish priest assign you?”

Dismas doesn’t bother doing the same. “Eh?”

“At confession. What did he assign you?”

“Ah. Said I ought to recite the Verses ten times over.” Dismas swigs from the flask, ignoring Reynauld’s frown. “And turn myself in to the bobbies if I want Absolution, but I’m not doing that.”

“Never mind that, which verses did he assign you?”

“Eh?” Dismas makes for the fourth tin of sardines – turns out, William doesn’t like them either. And Alhazred probably doesn’t. “Just said the Verses, mate. Didn’t know he was supposed to assign me chapters like a schoolteacher.”

“There are several forty thousand verses, Dismas.” He wipes the corners of his mouth with the neckerchief. Nasty habit, that. Even his bandit mates told him as much, and they were all filthy buggers.

“Right, well, doesn’t matter if I’m not doing it,” Dismas says, blowing his nose into the kerchief in his pocket before tossing it into the fire.

“if you put some effort into your life on the earthly plane, you may see absolution yet,” Reynauld says, palming his verse book. “Here, begin at the beginning. ‘Provenance, 1:1-4 – In the beginning the Host formed heaven and earth, and darkness ruled that which had no shape in the formless void; and the Host spoke, ‘Let there be Light,’ and it was so. And the Host knew himself to be of the Light, so it was good. And the Host cast Light to burn the Darkness.’”

Dismas squints at the page. “Lord, old boy, is this in the Old English? You can read that drek?”

“I can’t read,” Reynauld says.

Dismas laughs. “That’s the first normal thing you’ve said since we got here, even if it’s a gag.”

Reynauld pulls the verse book shut as if to shield it from him. “Are you mocking me?” 

“You read the altar relief of Saint What’s-it, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t. I don’t recall all of Saint Francis’ prayer, just one line. The Verses, I have memorized by heart.”

“Right, so if I were to open to just any page-“ here Dismas casually flips the book in the other’s lap, “-you couldn’t read a damn word of it.”

“That is what ‘I can’t read’ means, yes."

“Surely you know your numbers,” Dismas says – “here, look at the header. Fēoƿertīne, and the chapter before that, þrēotīne. Fourteen, and thirteen.”

“Can you read?” It’s said with astonishment, and a _bit_ of disgust, but Dismas preens anyway.

“Not the Old English so well, but the Queen's English I’ve gotten quite good at,” Dismas says, and he’s up scouring the shelves of the library before he settles on one of the spines that has a title.

Reynauld’s up and on his guard. “Put that down. We can’t risk-“

“Look,” Dismas says, “Beowulf.” That seems to have gotten his attention. Reynauld settles down.

“Here, Chapter One: The Life and Death of Scyld,” Dismas announces, cracking the book open and tilting it so the page catches the firelight.

 

 _"Lo!_ the Spear-Danes’ glory through splendid achievements  
  
The folk-kings’ former fame we have heard of,  
  
How princes displayed then their prowess-in-battle…”

 

Reynauld gets up once to busy himself with changing Alhazred’s bandage while he sleeps fitfully, but otherwise stays put, enraptured. Dismas gets through the first three chapters before William pokes his head back into the ruined wall of the library.

Dismas gestures at the book. “When Reynauld takes third watch, how about some Beowulf by the fire?”

“You can read your storybook later,” William grouses, "Go to sleep. We’ll change guard in a few hours,” so Dismas dog-ears the page and pulls his knapsack under his head – Reynauld gets up one more time to wipe the sweat off Alhazred’s forehead.

Dismas is already half-asleep when Reynauld speaks.

“You thought Junia had died, back there.”

“Sure did, old boy.” He reaches down to scratch his balls – he doesn’t care much that there’s no blanket to cover him.

Reynauld frowns. “That’s a filthy habit, especially to do in broad light.”

Dismas shrugs. “This old dog does as he likes.”

“And you trust the heathen when he says that they’re not Junia and the man-at-arms?” Lord, he’s already forgotten Harcourt’s name.

“I trust him more than I do myself on this,” Dismas says, “and the man’s sure to know – he’s good to have around.”

He expects Reynauld to say more, but all he says is “he is,” while watching Alhazred toss on the floor.

Dismas takes a moment before he says, “I’d still rather Paracelsus, though,” and he can see Reynauld grimace. 

“Don’t let the Light see you frown, old boy.”

 _”That physic,”_ Reynauld says, “she – I once watched her walk the barracks in the nude with her porridge. That physic is not right-”

“Oh, _mate,_ you watched her? Naughty bird, you.”

“I didn’t-“ Dismas doesn’t even bother trying not to laugh in his face, “I _witnessed_ it, then promptly went to confession. I’ve repented for _my_ sins, I’ll not hear it from you.”

“You shouldn’t like to get on her bad side, you know. I have the feeling she’ll salt your fields and burn your crops.”

“Burn my crops _then_ salt my fields.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You have to burn the crops from the field first, before you c-“

“Good _night,_ old boy,” Dismas says, and he realizes it’s not easy staying mad at him – he could say just about anything – has _said_ just about everything he can think of - and it’s like water off a duck’s back.

Dismas sleeps fitfully, as shallow as he did when he was hunting the roads – from the haze, he makes out Reynauld turning Alhazred away from the fire and pulling the hard tins out of the knapsack under his head.

Night passes over the crypts, fire burning low in the hearth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reynauld is actually just Kratos. Can't read, estranged son, and has a severed head dangling on his hip. Additionally, Dismas makes a Beowulf reference in his barks, and Beowulf is a famous piece of medieval literature - Reynauld would have most likely only ever heard it as part of a greater oral tradition, but it was extremely popular in his time.
> 
> If you're interested in DD art, lore and character speculation, and terrible shitposts, you can always follow [my Tumblr.](https://knightfuck.tumblr.com/)


	12. Candles

William has one hand to the hound’s nape – he’s thumbing a brass timepiece when Dismas comes up to where he’s sitting on a crate just inside the supply room, and Dismas thinks if anything they’re still too close – he can already smell violet, putrid sweet.

“You’ve got an hour left if you want it,” he says, eyes not leaving the darkness of the entryway.

“You’re nervous.” William grunts at that.

“Much too early to have things go this wrong. Much too early to camp,” he says, and Dismas runs his hand against the cut on his neck, grimacing.

“It’s all right-“

“Which band wore red?”

“Ah,” Dismas says. There it is. “Just the five of us towards the end. Tight as braces, even after bobbies rolled out the horse patrol, but it’s been – oh, hell,” he says, reaching for the flask, “long time ago, that’s all.”

William cuffs the flask deftly from his hand, and no amount of _I aim better when I’m drunk, swear it_ makes him give it back.

“Thinking of turning me in?” Dismas pulls the snuff from his pocket – he’s mercifully allowed that.

“It’s not that,” William says, pinching from the tin, “although a year ago today I’d have set the hound on you.”

“Aye,” Dismas says, and that’s all, because he knows, and a year ago today he’d be set flat against a tree on an unpaved road waiting for his next mark, but that’s not who he is now, is it? It isn’t.

“God’s breath, it’s fucking _crawling_ with them down here.” Dismas looks up. “Not even the bonemen, I mean. The brigands. There must be a fucking fortune in this keep.”

“Ah. I wouldn’t have done this, a year ago,” William says, like he didn’t hear him. “A year ago today. I would have said, leave it to the law,” and he’s looking down at the hound, like she knows better. “Now look at me.”

That’s an insult. “I didn’t know I was such poor company.”

“I didn’t mean-“

“Sure, lawman,” Dismas says, but he’s not listening. “Go play nurse. I’ll keep watch.”

The hound pads after him, and Dismas thinks fair play for him to be honest, and anyways he shouldn’t be such a bastard about it – but his chest is tight around the center and feels like it might rip like wet paper any second, and if they make it out in one piece he’ll say something about it, so he sits and keeps watch in silence.

_

“How is it?” William asks. Alhazred gingerly rubs a finger where the skin is split apart like the petals of a tulip.

“Worse. It’s worse.” He can’t get anything down but bread soaked in water - hell, can barely speak - but they can’t wait any longer, because the timepiece says daybreak – but something about it makes Dismas uneasy. _Should it work?,_ his instinct supplies, and _why the hell wouldn’t it_ comes right after, so he keeps shut.

“You don’t need your jaw to hold the skull,” Dismas supplies, and even Reynauld grits his teeth at that.

“We keep moving,” William says, so they do.

_

Dismas laughs when he sees the bone courtier’s face, lodging payload into its spine – it looked about ready to jump out of its skin, if it had any. It pulls its coat sleeve up to its face, a disturbingly human gesture, but the sword’s already severed coat and neck. The other skeletons turn to face him, advancing.

“That’s right, you stupid fuckers. All eyes on me,” Dismas says, ducking down to avoid a bolt to the face. Their arbalest doesn’t even see Reynauld until he’s skewered through. The axeman brings his shield up as if in defense, but when he gets close enough swings on him – with the shield.

Dismas goes flying, and something warm and tacky runs freely down his chest – no feelers pull loose to help, and it’s terrifying to be on the ground – there’s only so much he can see when his head’s swinging, trying to pull two left feet together-

Reynauld pulls him up. Alhazred’s mouth is looking considerably less torn up, and Dismas thinks-

“Look,” William says. A hunk of unbanded onyx the size of a man’s torso sits in its stand, propped up next to diagrams and volumetric flasks.

Dismas stares. “God’s teeth.” If it didn’t completely dwarf the size of his knapsack twice over, he’d be half tempted.

Reynauld pulls out one of the enameled vials from his vestment, and the man’s not curious at all what it is, what it does, and that’s disturbing too. It’s not even as though it’s the fear – he’s a bird with its homing instinct bred out of it, possibly less man and more vessel now. It’s disturbing.

“No,” he says as he’s uncapping.

“Beg pardon?”

“Whatever it is you’re thinking – no,” Reynauld says, dousing the stone; the surface bubbles into a porous mess, rendering the rock ugly and molten, and something in Dismas thinks it’s a right shame.

When a furious acolyte emerges, two massive men following at the heels of her torn dress, he’s more than happy to concede that maybe Reynauld was right this time over – just this once.

_

It feels obvious to him now, crouching down to stare at their bare faces. He should have thought of this four rooms back but now that they’re breaking for a moment he can sate his curiosity. The skull masks are laid to the side, all four identical – two of them women, two of them men, just so.

“They’re just people,” Dismas says, then “God’s teeth, they’re blind.”

William’s nearby, giving the hound a drink from his own waterskin. “It’s hardly unusual. These things, they spring up just about everywhere. Broke into a large one back in the day, but it was already too late – all twenty or so of them dead on the floor facing their prophet. They tell them something – whip yourselves, blind yourselves, kill yourselves – to come closer to Satan.”

“There’s easier ways if you want that,” Dismas mutters, and he doesn’t say anything about how perfect all around their eyes are – no breaks in the sclera from scarring, not anything, and he especially doesn’t say anything about something he’d heard in the Americas about white-eyed fish in their caves, blind from generations on generations without ever seeing sunlight.

“We’ve been keeping the light low. There’s no need for that,” Dismas says, sitting back from where he’s crouched.

“But the candles,” Alhazred says from where he’s propped up against a collapsed wall.

“Not for their light. Their smell.” He grimaces, and William’s winding around to investigate before he stops dead.

“What in…” He crouches to finger one of the masks, particularly the mockery of a Christian nimbus affixed to the cast iron skull. He’s so transfixed that he doesn’t even respond to _you alright, good man?_

“This.” He traces the spines of the halo. “This thing, I’ve seen it before but it can’t be-“ The hound snatches it from between his hands and whips her neck back and forth, frothing – it comes apart into scrap in moments.

 _”Heel,”_ he says, and the hound nearly disobeys. 

“On the job?” Dismas says. “Just another cult for the pile, aye?”

“No,” William says, “not even close. It’s different,” and his hands shake when he wipes the sweat from his brow. “They – the small ones, it’s maybe a half dozen people not in their right minds, all bad in the head but harmless, the most vulnerable in the city drawn in by someone who’s both bad in the head _and_ dangerous. But if anyone gets hurt, it’s themselves.”

He looks up, eyes unfocused. “They don’t – they don’t string up women on a tabernacle like swine in a shop. They don’t have the entirety of the police force in bed with them.”

They stay longer than is anticipated. Alhazred pulls him away from the corpses and sits him by the wall, but for a long time he doesn’t say anything at all. Dismas hides the masks in a barrel to stop the dog from baying, but they can’t stay put. Reynauld lights a new torch with the one that’s dying before they move on.

_

Reynauld’s still breathing, that’s all that matters.

Despite everything, he always goes first, and the brawlers were much, much closer to the second altar. Dismas swears they waited until both hands were off his sword and on the vial.

Just like on the Old Road he swats at Dismas and his dirty hands, swats at the hound looking to lick his wound, and swats twice as hard at Alhazred and the skull. Now he’s bleeding clean through three rolls of bandages in the cultist’s torture room, their second break already. Fancy that. There’s a skeleton of the nonanimated kind still fastened to the rack, both arms popped out of their dried sockets, half-melted candles littering the table.

Alhazred says it first. “It’s not theirs.”

“Aye?” Dismas pulls at a set of rusted pliers hanging on the wall, gagging as they stick to the plate. “I reckon you’re right, but then-“

“The diagrams, the alchemy sets. None of them are theirs.”

“Don’t that beat all,” Dismas mutters, and maybe they’d say more if Reynauld didn’t start coughing.

There’s blood in his spit, but it turns out to be from biting his cheek. Dismas winds up part of his neckerchief and sticks the corner in his mouth.

Alhazred waits until he’s rifling the sarcophagus in the corner until he speaks. “Your chest, are you-“

“You made the right call,” Dismas says, and he means it. “Don’t be sorry for it. Worry about him,” he says, head inclined towards Reynauld’s slumped form.

There’s gold, sure, but something else. There’s a gold leaf frame, and a painting in it of a woman, hair piled high in an ugly mixture of straightened locks and ringlets, the neckline of her dress pulled down to expose the top of her massive cleavage. A vial of some sort hangs from her neck as she smiles, much like Audrey does.

 _The Red Woman,_ the back reads. Dismas shrugs and muscles it into his bag. He’s sure the heir could find a use for it, _one_ way or the other. It's borderline odalisque, if one focuses on all the right parts. 

The next time Reynauld starts up with the coughing, voice growing hoarser by the minute, Dismas just ups and leaves. He’s halfway out the door before William even says anything.

“Where are you going?”

“Hunting,” Dismas says, then disappears, one lit candle in hand.

_

He’d rather have run into a scouting party of four of the bonemen than a spider, Dismas thinks, but it’s hardly up to him. It’s no house spider, either – its thorax is the size of a dog, its streaky abdomen an overripe watermelon affixed to its horrid shape.

“I hate spiders,” Dismas breathes. As if the spider doesn’t know that. He runs for the torture room.

 _”Alhazred,”_ he bellows, and the man nearly drops the skull when he fumbles for it. Dismas kites the horrid thing around, its legs skittering like a jerky automaton.

When all’s said and done, however, the spider curls up into its death position with just one bullet, resin red splattered on the stone floor, and Reynauld sleeps more soundly after the feelers writhe under the bandages to pull the skin below his collarbone taut.

“I’m a genius,” Dismas says, sweating harder now than any trip with a water barrel could make him.

“A genius would have _said something,”_ William says, the dog chewing off a piece of leg for its dinner, and he’s right but it felt easier to let them figure it out.

“And a hero, I should think.”

“Alhazred did all the heavy lifting.”

 _“I_ brought the spider.”

William grunts. “The dog could have done that, and faster too.”

He’s crabby about that. “I’m going back out.” At least the bonemen don’t complain.

_

It’s a fucking awful idea, and he knows it. That doesn’t stop him from doing it, though. Something something poetic irony, et. al and goodnight.

Dismas has one hand wrapped around his cock, the other bracing the door of the confessional. He’s half afraid someone will walk straight into the priest’s side of the booth and hear him.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” he breathes, then laughs because that’s too ghastly even for him.

Lord, it’s been awhile. Everyone can hear everything in the barracks. Bathhouse is no good (can barely even bathe in there), the whorehouse too expensive. He’d have done it in the goddamned woods like a wayward pervert if he didn’t fancy the idea of brigands jumping him with his pants around his ankles.

The buckle’s just under his hand and clinks with each pump. Good. He likes to keep time when he’s rutting.

He’s honest when it’s just him (and presumably the Light filtering in through the lattice) – he’s awful fond of the cultist men. They certainly breed them big. The cultist women aren’t so bad either – he’s not sure why their tits have to be half out, but he’s sure it’s conducive to their witchcraft somehow.

Dismas pulls his hand away from his crown, cock seizing in protest – it’d be embarrassing to cum that quickly. To regular men and women, certainly, but doubly so to the halfmen. He’s already leaked drops onto the confessional’s seat. Better that than his overcoat. A week longer and he’d be wanking it to Paracelsus-

That was too much, he’s desperate to think of something else. Just about anyone will do.

Fuck it, he’ll recite another dozen verses for it later, he thinks, because he knows Reynauld’s chest looks damn good under all those bandages – all muscle and fat, the body of a career soldier who’s had it good, hands calloused from gripping the hilt. Could probably rip a smaller man in two, could probably throw him onto the bed-

He lets go of the door to grip his mouth when he cums, spattering the lattice window.

“It is one day and ten hours since I have last Confessed,” Dismas rasps, slumping in the seat.

_

Reynauld’s shaking, looking anemic with one hand to his gruel. William packed extra for the dog, but seeing as the spider’s meaty enough, Dismas has her share of tinned beef on the fire.

They’ve stopped too often for too long. There’s a handful of tins in Alhazred’s pack and no more, the rest of their knapsacks crowded with gold and a few paintings inserted longways, including the incredibly drab _Edward in the Priory Gardens_ and the more enticing _Bacchanalian Summer_.

“When did you get this?” Reynauld asks, voice hoarse. Dismas absently plies the ring around his finger as he sits.

“The good doctor gave it to me,” he says, “tells me it’ll keep me safe.”

Reynauld frowns, and Dismas wonders what he’s done wrong this time, but instead he says “I’ll do you one better,” throwing a bag to his side.

“Gunpowder,” Dismas says, pulling the tassel loose, “flashfire. They use this in heavy pistols.”

“For your firestarter,” Reynauld says, although it could have been urn ash or charcoal for all he knew.

“Hell of a find, old boy. You have my thanks.” Dismas takes the neckerchief covered in blood and spittle tossed to the side (he’ll ignore that insult, for now) and fastens it back around his neck, which earns him a look – not enough to get him to take it off, anyway.

Reynauld’s back to spooning gruel, so Dismas shows him what he’s got next to the paintings in his knapsack.

“Look,” he says, pulling out the copy of _Beowulf,_ third chapter still dogeared. “I’ve never read it all the way through, don’t you know.” That’s a lie. He’ll go to Confession about it later.

Reynauld says “put that back, it’s a waste of pack space” around his mouthful of porridge but isn’t quite as zealous about it now. 

“And what’s more, I found this one on the shelves too.” Dismas pulls out a hardbound book with a faded print on the front of a girl in a summer dress staring up at a grinning cat in a tree, quite pensive.

 _“Alice in Wonderland,_ it’s called.”

Reynauld stares at him, eyes half-lidded. “This is a children’s book.”

 _”You_ still can’t read it,” Dismas says, snatching Alice and the Cat and tucking them in with _The Red Woman_. “And anyways, it’s just to pass time.”

Reynauld opens his mouth, but on second glance he decides it’s a waste of energy to argue with a grown man who wants to read a storybook and imprison a necromancer to resurrect all the mice, not necessarily in that order, so he lets it go.

_

There’s something a little more familiar about the cultists that comes with the territory of having jerked off to them (both their men _and_ women, just to be thorough) – it’s no less frightening, and the white noise makes Dismas crack his head hard on an upturned urn on the way – but anyways, seeing the final altar makes it all worth it.

“Easy, girl.” William lets her fuss and whine and clean him, bad gash to the face, deep enough for bone to shine. It’ll scar – maybe Paracelsus will be wanting that too. Reynauld can hardly walk, so he’s propped up against a cabinet until further notice.

Dismas is the one who uncaps the final vial, pouring it evenly onto the flat surface of the rock. It scabs and boils before it settles, brown and singed at its edges.

“That’s the last of them,” he says, half certain he’s standing and half certain he’s sitting. Having his head knocked around makes it difficult to tell. Some of the stones pulse, the others bleed together.

“Found an emerald,” Reynauld says, half gone himself – Dismas realizes he’s crushed the cabinet with a shovel and is fishing around in the wreckage. Madman.

“You- you’re _bleeding,”_ Dismas slurs. “Shall I fetch another spider?”

_”No,”_ William snaps, “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve sustained brain damage.”

“Then I’ll fetch _two,”_ He snaps back, drunkenly making for the door.

It takes Alhazred to tell him it’s not a good idea, and he trusts Alhazred, so he sits down like a good lad.

“You can’t let him sleep,” Alhazred says hurriedly, William quick to get Reynauld away from the glass. “Either of them. They’ll most certainly not wake up.” Dismas tries to take a nap right then and there, out of spite.

“Don’t go into any of the confessionals,” He says, and things get hazy after that. He’s propped up on Alhazred’s shoulder, the man smelling like turmeric and something earthy and sharp up close, Reynauld supported by the other.

“Go on ahead, girl. Tell me what you see,” William says, and the hound obeys, skittering out the door. 

“She’s a good lass,” Dismas says, or tries to say, but William gets what he means.

Eventually they’re back at the vaulted hall again, where the brigands were – William stops to rifle the pockets of some of the ones dead on the floor, rewarded with a handful of smooth jade stones, but otherwise there’s no stops on the grueling path back.

The sun’s almost beneath the horizon when they emerge into the opening of the hall.

“We can't,” Alhazred says, panicked. “Brigands in the mountains. They’ll pick us off.”

“We don’t have a choice,” William says, half asleep and switching shoulders for Reynauld’s brace, so they walk.

Day breaks over Anchester when four men arrive, no energy left even to cross the bridge – the townspeople meet them at the crossing and spirit them away to the sanitarium.

 _“Thank God,”_ Dismas says, and he closes his eyes even as they jostle him to keep him awake – _it’s their problem now,_ he thinks, darkness closing in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I was being true to the source material, Dismas would have been jumped by four wolf-sized spiders at a time and died a horrible, hilarious death. Did you know he makes reference to Alice in Wonderland too? Wanted to work that in there.
> 
> Some related art from my Tumblr: [Misc abomination drawings](https://knightfuck.tumblr.com/post/176174998167/drawing-bigby-laughing-instantly-cleared-my-skin), and a [Dismas dakimakura](https://knightfuck.tumblr.com/post/175560458437/quirk-acquired-mercenarys-bedfellow) (yes, I'm being serious.)


	13. Guild

Dismas sits up so fucking fast that he goes down again in the same heartbeat, the rip in his chest like knuckles grinding against his sternum.

“The _head_ ," in the next breath, “The _fucking_ head-“

“Easy, _soldat_.” A flask presses into his shaking hand. “You’ve earned this.” Dismas drinks deep – from the pattern of the rust on the rim, he knows it’s his own.

“Oh? Is that- oh.” William’s in the sickbed adjacent, face half obscured in the light from a partially demolished archway opening.

When he turns, Dismas sees the indent in his brow bone, as if the chisel slipped on a marble bust.

“We’ll find him next time. Or perhaps,” William says, one hand curled around his waterskin, “we don’t,” and the catacombs could span half the underground of the peninsula and they would never know-

Dismas coughs in fits, holding his chest. “Sorry, good man.”

“What for?” William’s got one hand shielding his eyes, squinting.

“…I haven’t the foggiest, to be honest.” Dismas coughs again, spills old swill on the repurposed barracks blanket.

“Well never mind it then – I’ll save it for later. Lord knows you’ll be needing it.” He scratches his beard, the sound of it like dry grass.

“You’re awake.” Alhazred smiles with his mouth closed – at least he’s on his feet. He sets a water bowl down, hands toying with a roll of bandages.

“Any headache, nausea, stomach pain, excessive phlegm-“ he asks, an elegant hand making for the blanket. Dismas pulls it up like a lady’s partition between them.

“Woah there, man. I shouldn’t like to have a liberal arts student prodding around.”

“Liberal arts _professor._ And all treatment you could receive now is strictly palliative.” He gestures for him to lift his undershirt. “I invite you to look for yourself – although surely you know, by now.”

Dismas looks. The sloped burns are pink in the center, the new skin wrinkled and shiny. Even the shield’s bruising is purple and yellow at the edges, no dark red up against the surface of the skin.

“God’s feet,” Dismas says, before he slumps back into the bed, exhausted. It hurts all around the edges, like fresh sunburn, but worse.

Alhazred smiles, dipping one of the bandages in the water, then rolling it onto his forehead.

“You’ll have mild fever, most likely, and you’ll need to watch how long you stay on your feet – and then, stay in shade and avoid loud noise, but otherwise you’ll be fine. That goes for both of you,” he says, nodding towards William. His accent is stronger with the speech impediment. 

“I barely knew him,” Dismas slurs. “I saw him maybe twice, I was there when they buried the unit standard. But I barely fuckin’ knew him.” Maybe the sun’s stinging his eyes. Maybe that’s it.

“I know,” Alhazred says. “I know.” He places another folded bandage on top of his chest, cold water running down his sides. “The contractor has the head now.”

Maybe it makes him a coward, but he sags in relief knowing he doesn't have to see the horrid effigy, severed strings and bits dangling from its horrid manmade stump.

Baldwin’s here, covered boots making his entrance almost silent. He winds a roll of bandage around one broken leather glove, setting down his own bowl of water.

He turns to his right. _”As salaam alaikum.”_

Alhazred takes a moment to cover his surprise. _“Wa alaikum assalam_.” He furrows his brow when he sees Baldwin’s arm underneath the soiled bandage.

“You must forgive me for being forward. Your alphosis – I have not seen it so severe in a very long time.”

Baldwin’s unreadable underneath the mask. “Bal'ā' was once asked about his affliction and replied, ‘the sword of God has been polished.’”

“Surely God cannot whet His sword on one stone,” Alhazred says carefully.

Blood blooms in the water bowl, the bandage soiled with skin and pus. “He has been whetting His sword on all of us. We would not be here otherwise.”

“Hell, I would,” Dismas grunts. William’s quiet.

Baldwin turns to him. “If it pleases you, the caretaker is in the square, back from the mainland with his supplies.”

That’s enough to get him on his feet – Alhazred puts up a fight, but with one hand to the wall he’s making his way down the sanitarium hall, back out towards civilization.

_

There’s a crowd in front of the parked stagecoach, mercenary, seasonal worker, and local alike clamoring for the crated goods. Dismas isn’t well enough to fight his way towards the front, but at least a few of the townsfolk see the gun holstered at his waist and make way.

God’s teeth. There’s sugar, molasses, rum, meat, grain, goose fat, tallow – there’s an excitement to seeing such mundanity after being trapped in a shithole ten miles down under. Dismas pays up for rum and soap but leaves the meat of the bounty for the others. There was sovereign enough for his share and his beloved books left untouched in the knapsack – the oil paintings and the rest were gone. Plundered by his fucking ponce of a contractor.

At least he can’t drink himself to death without the money, can he? Dismas rubs the cork of the jar.

No, but he can get pretty damn close now.

What _really_ catches his eye is a lone nomad’s wagon, looking just as rundown as the stagecoach, sitting center of the square by the old statue without a single peruser. A faded sign with a round-cut jewel is tacked to its hood, tattered banner at its back. A traveler woman looks up from where she’s polishing a philosopher’s stone when he steps inside, but her expression quickly sours.

He’s fingering an ivory elephant, yellowed with age with small red rubies for eyes, when the woman finally snaps.

“My people are a burden to the state in the winter months, are we, _sahib_? But not when we have something you want.” 

Dismas puts up a hand in a placating gesture. “I don’t mean to impose, madame.” Something in a dusty display case one over grabs his attention. “And not all the Britons themselves are above vagrancy. Certainly not I.”

“I am not a _vagrant, sahib.”_

Dismas gingerly picks up the verse book in the case, heavy and excessively ornamented in gold leaf. “Just these two, please.”

“Three thousand,” the woman snipes, and swipes the bounty the moment it hits the desk.

Dismas clears the wagon, heavy smell of frankincense and myrrh clinging to his nostrils, before she can change her mind.

_

“Where did you get this?” Reynauld’s voice is unusually tender, more out of blood loss and head trauma than anything else. He palms the spine of the holy book, sigil of the Light’s Templar engraved in the metalwork cover.

Dismas shrugs. “Caravan stopped by in town square.” The man’s been sequestered in one of the Sanitarium’s turrets, looking whiter than usual – no small feat. Bruising indents mark where the leather belts had him strapped down.

“Awful thing to do to a sick man. ‘Force-meant therapy?’ Sounds like snake oil.”

“’Reinforcement therapy,’” Reynauld corrects, “after – after an emerald fell from my vestment in the study,” and he goes red just saying the words. Like he thinks he’s going to judge him. His eyes don’t leave the cover.

“Well? Open it up, see what’s inside,” Dismas laughs, as if he doesn’t have the damn thing memorized cover to cover.

Reynauld opens it up to humor him, touching the heavy vellum with reverence. He tucks it next to his layman’s copy, the one he’s had since he was just a serf’s boy.

“How did you know?”

“Beg pardon?”

“That I had a son,” Reynauld says, rolling painstakingly to one side of the sickbed, eyes studiously looking away.

“When did I- ah,” Dismas says, studying the flask in hand. “Best guess, I suppose.” He goes to take a drink before he shrugs. “And – call it a hunch – I shouldn’t think that a daughter’s opinion weighs as much as a son’s, in your mind.”

Reynauld frowns, but there's no bite. “Such cynical judgement you have of me. If I had a daughter, she would have my heart. Such is the curse of women, since Eve.”

“And your son? What does he command?”

“My soul. Such is the curse of men,” Reynauld says, “since Adam,” but something about it sounds wrong at the edges. Like he said something he didn’t mean to.

“Now you can pretend to read this book, too,” Dismas says, to break up the tension in the air. Before he makes for the main hall he stops.

“I’ll be back later with more Beowulf if you like, old boy. Sit tight, and don’t go near the sun, or hear any excessive noise ‘til then,” he says, before he disappears down the stairs.

_

If Baldwin looked particularly vulnerable washing his wounds in the sanitarium, it only makes him seem all the more preternatural when he’s hauling ass. Dismas watches him with two buckets – _bathtubs,_ practically – of water, one in each grip, walking steadily to one end of the Guild’s training hall to the other, careful to step around the massive gaps and cracked tiling.

The inside of the building is built in the style of a coliseum, weapons and shields of all species mounted to the vaulted walls. Several gated entrances are built into the stonework. All that remains is busted training dummies, hammered bull’s-eye mounts, piles of metal and stone and wood slats – the floor itself looks like a herd of elephants has trampled the stonework to pieces, leaving it uneven and busted. Dismas bends to pull a flintlock’s ball from one of the indents.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

“Out of harm’s way, love!” Audrey brushes past, blonde hair like a horse’s tail smacking his cheek, delicate hands gripped around another tub filled three-quarters full.

A dirty hand clamps the shoulder of his overcoat. “Come here, little man.” Ah, so she's running the drills. It should come as no surprise. A blur of red hair shoves a wooden bucket to his gloves, seemingly – did she do that single-handed?-

“Oy! I’m not well, you know,” he says when his chest gives way and the bucket spills over to his boots when it drops.

“No, but we cannot make you _younger_.” Boudica stands over him until he’s got both hands on the bucket again. “Endurance! Endurance alone is all that saves you from a meaningless death.” She shoulders her own two tubs and hustles in double time over to the other end of the arena, making for Baldwin.

“Fuck me,” Dismas says when he’s out of earshot of all three of them. “Enough coin to resurrect the dead and the man can’t invest in some proper equipment.”

Dismas gets to hauling. Endurance, after all, was going to save him from a meaningless death.

_

One of the barkeep’s newly hired help has to bring the bread and fish to Dismas’ table.

Everything hurts so _fucking_ much. Turns out that being easily suggestible makes for terrible muscle pain. Everything from his neck down is locked up until further notice.

“Fuck me,” Dismas says, moving himself one inch at a time towards the half-clean spoon to the side.

“Language,” William sighs. The dog is sleeping by the tableside, apparently unbothered by the raucous din of the Yellow Hand.

The spoon clatters to the floor. “I said, _fuck me_ ,” Dismas says, fully aware that somewhere behind the curtain the good lord was having a gaff. 

“It’s your own fault. The Hindoo fellow said, be careful how long you stay standing, then you went and hauled water for the hell of it.”

Dismas spots a game of dice being held towards the front and makes for it one inch at a time through the crowded floor.

Audrey and a markswoman – a Moor, by the darkness of her skin – are throwing dice. The tavern keep heads him off before he can reach the table.

“You’d like to gamble? Not in my establishment.” 

Dismas puts his hands up, disarmingly nonchalant. “You would think? I couldn’t swindle a blind man in this state. Why don’t I show you.”

“You’ve got loaded dice in your sleeve’s collar – two sixes on each face,” the barkeep says, not missing a beat. “Off with you.”

“Unchristianlike to judge a man by his cover,” Dismas says as he backs off, completely cool until he turns away.

How the fuck did he know?

Reynauld comes in once the tavern’s lights dip low and the night rush is already paying off its tab for the evening. His coin purse is heavy, as is natural for a man who hasn’t the stomach for ale, gambling, or whores. He hunches over his stew and bread, an absurdly Franciscan meal.

Dismas makes his way slow-like to where he’s sitting at the very back. “Feeling well enough to climb down from your ivory tower?”

“You should be resting, not doing – any of this.” Looks like the stiffness hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Live a little, my good man.” Dismas leans back, careful not to topple from the stool. “You’ve certainly got the coin for it.”

Reynauld rustles the bag as if in agreement. “It’s an absurd amount of money – unseemly, even. Coin enough that even a Jew could be satisfied.”

“Now who’s being judgmental?” Dismas swipes a bit of bread from the side of his plate. “Glad they’ve found some success in the New World, even if it’s mostly single men what’s not wanted in the Old World countries.” 

“Success _where_?” before he can reply, “and how do you know?”

“Oh hell. Old boy, a Jew probably got that molasses for you,” Dismas snorts, nodding towards the tin, “and the hamlet's supply of sugar, and the rum too. All those come from the Dutch West Indies, where they’re trading.”

Reynauld looks a little ill at that. He sets the jar of black treacle further away, as if it’s poisoned, before he leans in.

“That means you’ve seen one before? A Jew, I mean.”

“You haven’t, knight? You’ve been fighting pagans under a rock this whole time?”

“Do they have-“ Reynauld sits back on the stool, “do they have devil’s horns on their heads, and forked tails, and hooves? Describe them to me.”

“Good God, man, no. They speak in an unfamiliar tongue, but they look like men and women, with dark hair, and dark eyes, like-“ _Like me._ Dismas doesn’t say it, but that’s the implication.

Reynauld stiffens when Alhazred takes a seat. Dismas ignores him. “Professor, what say you? The Jews, are they hooved like devils?”

Alhazred eyes him. “My goodness. Who told you such a thing?”

“But they use Christian blood, for their celebration of redemption from Egypt.”

“Merely lamb’s blood. I’ve lived in Damascus – I can assure you, the Passover festival uses lamb’s blood.”

“See?” Dismas says. Reynauld chews on his bread with brows furrowed.

After Alhazred’s excused himself to the athenaeum, they walk to the barracks in half-darkness. 

“The Hindoo saved your life, don’t you know, when you were sound asleep. No need to act like a stranger."

Reynauld fingers his tabard. “I cannot be beholden to a Saracen. I will save his life in turn. Then we will be even.” Close enough, Dismas thinks.

Reynauld stops abruptly by the barrack’s entrance. “Let me see your chest." Dismas’ stomach turns.

“Beg pardon, good man.”

“I practice medicine, you know.” That’s good enough for him. He dutifully pulls up his undershirt.

Reynauld prods the oversensitive meat of his chest, nodding sagely. “I see. I have a restorative for this. Give me your flask.” Dismas complies, in a daze.

In hindsight he should’ve seen this coming – in a split second the man overturns it, dumping it out onto the dirt floor.

“Drinking disrupts the healing process and saps your strength,” Reynauld says. He tucks the flask back into his pocket for him like a dutiful wife.

Dismas is still staring in disbelief at the wet ground. Reynauld raps his chest.

“'Don’t let the Light see you frown, old boy.'”

There’s something like mirth in his voice. He turns to make for the barracks, leaving a one-man mourning procession outside.

_

Dismas is pulling on his overcoat in the morning, still soft in the head from a hangover when the mercenary appears by his lock box, more armor than man.

“I’ve got you now.”

Dismas squints at him.

"Uh. You sure have, my good man.”

The click and snap of flashbang fills the hall with smoke in a matter of seconds – a knotted rope pulls tight around him and pulls him face-first into a waiting fist.

He flops onto the ground, water rushing in his ears and blood rushing from a broken nose. One of the many fliers circulating London with a shoddy print of his likeness is shoved into his face.

 

__

_WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE_

_WILL BE PAID FOR BY THE BRITISH ROYAL MAIL_

_GUNFIGHTER AND FORTY TIMES A KILLER!_

Good heavens. There’s a lot that’s wrong with the circulation, not least of which the conservative rounding of the body count of each mark. The portrait’s not so great either.

Dismas settles on “my nose isn’t _that_ big-“ before he’s being dragged out to the mess hall by the rope. He stays tied up for a few hours at least while he waxes poetic about the logistics of bringing his body back to London for the bounty and the costs associated before his captor finally deems him too much of a drag to bring in.

He’s not looking forward to sleeping in the same quarters as _him_ for the rest of his time, but at least he’s free now – the man didn’t so much as say a word, just untied him when he got too insufferable to bear for any amount of coin and stalked back out, too-large shoulders pinned forwards like a predator’s.

“There’s supposedly _honor_ among thieves,” he yells out, resetting his nose with a howl, before making for the outside. 

Another morning in the heir’s circus of antisocial clowns passes him by.

_

Only a scant handful of birds can be seen above the forest line. Guild practice is relegated to the outdoors for today, apparently.

“However far you are from home, remember that the wilderness of any land will be father, mother, and guide!” That’s all Boudica says before Dismas is being pushed into the thicket at the edges of Anchester, not even on the single road leading out of the hamlet.

Alhazred’s in the sanitarium for the “therapy,” same as Reynauld – apparently, it’s every morning for a week. Everyone’s fallen into their own private routines with the other recruits, leaving him every morning with the noddy of a woman who practically lives in the arena of the Guild.

Dismas ends up walking the wilderness without any sense of direction. “Come on, fucking guide me already.” He kicks a pile of reddened leaves from the forest floor.

He stops when he hears a gasping behind a mossy embankment.

Titian is hunched flat against the ground, covered in sticky offal and bile and fur – boar? Wolf? It’s the first time in a week that he's seen him. Dismas steps back, nauseous at the sight of blood coagulating against his bony hide.

He can’t tell if he’s the beast or the offering.

A beast couldn’t know language, so when he approaches he speaks. “Good god, man.”

One finger digs into the wet earth, tracing the same symbol over and over again, one almost-circle, five spines-

The Iron Crown.

The man’s eyes are so inflamed at the edges that they almost dwarf the sclera.

“How long do I have left as a man? How long? How long?” Each question punctuates the finger digging into the earth.

Dismas outstretches his waterskin but he draws away, as if he doesn’t know what it is.

“Did you lose the road out here? Anchester’s back that way.” Dismas struggles to find his voice. “Come, I’ll get you to the sanitarium-“

Titian bares his teeth at him, long and fanged but for a second, he’s in despair.

“Oh God, don’t come near me, I _beg you-_ " is all he can get out before he runs, unbelievably quick into the forest, away from Dismas, away from the Iron Crown.

He’s left staring at the bits of marrow and bone on the ground, the remains of a cryptid lost to the emptiness of the in-between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't be including pairing names until they appear in-chapter, just so nobody who reads each update in real-time feels disappointed that their pairing hasn't come up yet. Also, definitely had to tack on the 'period-typical racism' tag for this one.
> 
> The anti-Semitic imagery of Jews having horns, cloven hooves, and tails originates from Medieval Europe, and was still not dispelled in its entirety in the early 19th century, same with other ideas like the use of human blood in Passover.
> 
> Tardif was the last of last week's recruitment. Tune in next time to see the next batch of lads coming in. :_)


	14. Cloister

She watches him from inside the stagecoach, unabashedly fixated.

The hammer clicks, muzzle secured at the base of the guard’s head, the coachman himself hurriedly pulling parcels out of the strongbox.

There it is – when he thinks he’s looked the other way, the coachman’s hand pulls up behind his overcoat, to his waist pocket –

In a second Dismas has the hunting sword at the guard’s throat, the gun in his non-dominant hand leveled at the driver.

“Not on your life.” He nods to the strongbox. “The compartment in the back too, old man.”

The coachman can’t help himself. He looks up as he’s pulling out a mother-of-pearl necklace wrapped in gauze.

“ _Blackguard._ The peelers will have you in the morning. You’ll be hung from the town square by midday,” the necklace slips out, pearls slipping between the mass of parcels, “I swear it.”

Dismas thinks – no, he _knows_ \- how much easier it would be to gut the man’s neck and fire. It could be done in one motion, without one telegraphing the other.

But he doesn’t. That’s not what he’s here for.

She doesn’t have those awful watery eyes that’s all the fashion among the wealthy women, specifically to look like they’ve got consumption. The sort of tragic beauty thing, he thinks, dolls washed in ammonia and set in muslin. If they could move, they’d most certainly crack.

He’s got himself set to leave without so much as speaking a word to her – he’s done enough as it is – but she speaks first.

“Is this your road?”

 _None of them are mine,_ he wants to say. “It’s been hard times on us all, my lady,” is what he says instead.

“Has it? I haven’t noticed.” She unlatches the brooch on her riding cloak, throwing it carelessly over the stagecoach window. “You can have it, if you like. It’ll fetch quite the price – I should expect it back in the window of the jeweler’s, you know, the one by Covent Garden, in a week’s time.” 

He picks it up gingerly by the pin. “I shouldn’t like to take what is yours. It’s-“

“It's mine? By what virtue?” She signals the driver to climb back in. "Do you own what you own by virtue?"

He’s nothing if not a man of his word, even if it’s more hers. He even pays to have the man under the counter have it in the window on the fifth; it’s gone by the sixth.

She doesn’t bother having a guard the second time around; even the driver’s been swapped for one that’s less likely to put up a fight.

This time, the brooch has an address written on the back.

_

The flashfire powder kicks hard and ends up stunning _him_ rather than the flock.

It may be of use in the coming weeks when Dismas is strong enough to handle the recoil, but it might dismember him in the dungeons if he doesn’t get used to it.

Still, he thinks. If the lure of fresh meat didn’t draw him in, he might have taken those chances. The hunt leaves him alone with his intrusive thoughts, where he rolls old memories over his tongue and thinks this time, he’s on a different trajectory.

When the flurry of wings subsides there’s one goose left on the grazing grounds, not yet thinned from migration down south.

He’s hardly the only one who’s taking advantage of the autumn harvest. The bounty hunter’s coming down from the shore adjacent, a string of yellow-bellied fish secured by rope around one hand, the hook in the other.

The man doesn’t look like the type for small talk, but he’s taken an interest in the gun. “Those were made to protect from _your kind_.”

Dismas turns it by the barrel. “Hell, where do you think I got it from?” Before the paneling was replaced, he’d done whatever he could to scuff _British Royal Mail_ from the wood, but it couldn’t be helped – even now he thinks he feels the engraving like a phantom limb, resentful even after all these years.

They walk together. It’s not a show of camaraderie. There’s only one road back.

_

He thinks his mind may be on its way out next, but it turns out the bounty hunter just couldn’t care less for the latest development.

“You can’t _fire_ me, I _quit!_ "

“ _God’s sake, man,_ you’ll trip and die from that height-”

A flurry of lute music interrupts the heir’s panicked cajoling. 

Good heavens. It takes him a moment to recognize the man as a court jester – probably because court jesters are the sort of thing from storybooks, and not the sort of people seen in polite society now. Dismas supposes it’s not his place to judge – bottom of the barrel contract work only catches the eye of bottom of the barrel men, after all.

Surely, he thinks, it’s not possible to hit bottom and _dig_.

The man stops his raucous dance suddenly, pointing down at the heir. “Your rate’s just gone up again, idiot. I charge extra for song and dance, as you do for your clientele if they want a kiss afterwards.”

Words like _aggressive, volatile, deceptive_ are usually the ones for any specie of mercenaries. Dismas has never met one whose character could so thoroughly be described as _unemployable._

“The contract work specifies _serious_ soldiers of fortune and practitioners only,” the man shouts from the bottom of the athenaeum, red in the face at the recruitment process being drawn into a public spectacle. “I’ll have you driven from the town if you-“

The man’s foot slips through the half-rotted roofing, taking with it a good section of the red tiling as it falls through. 

The near-death experience doesn’t faze him. He raises the lute above his head to protect it from the rubble and splintered wood, raising one gloved finger to the heir’s (just barely) visible head.

“Now you’ve done it. If you couldn’t afford me _before,_ you certainly can’t now.”

One of the recruits in the crowd shouts “do you know the Lament of Tristan?,” which seems to put the man in even worse a mood.

“ _Do you know the Lament of Tristan?_ ” he says in a whiny, high-pitched voice to mock him, before lowering the lute just a bit and playing a damned good rendition of it.

Judging by the fact that Dismas sees him later in the barracks when he’s hanging the goose carcass outside the stronghold’s window, patched trousers torn to shreds with probably a half-pound of gold in hand for doing quite literally nothing (worse than nothing, actually), the man has a good chance of being sent out as fast as he’s arrived.

Dismas doesn’t believe in prayer, but he’s not going to be sent out with a professional clown to do the Light’s bidding. Worse yet, he thinks he hears the sound of bells reverberating down the stone halls when he’s sleeping – he keeps his eyes shut, so as to not incriminate himself.

_

Dismas awakens to the smell of cooking goose coming in from the barrack’s embrasures, the clank of tankards carried on September’s air.

He doesn’t even bother to wash his face first, he just comes out and stands in the courtyard in his long underwear, his prize trussed up, roasted, and distributed among the early risers. The bounty hunter’s veil barely lifts as he bites into a drumstick, Audrey with the other – she takes special care to look him in the eyes as she takes a bite.

“A goose is hardly worth your dignity. Go get your trousers.” Reynauld’s got one hand on his shoulder and another on a plate from the tavern with an _entire breast._

“This is untenable.” He takes the breast and splits it in half, shoving it in his mouth. Reynauld lets him. “I have no rights, old boy.”

“You have no pants.” He’s not bothered, the fat bastard. The court jester’s just eating the skin from his portion, then tossing the meat into the grass. “Go back into the barracks and get dressed.”

Dismas goes back into the barracks and gets dressed.

_

Reynauld’s taken up as one of the instructors of the recruitment at the Guild. Dismas almost wants to sulk, because _he was here first,_ but he doesn’t.

What he does know is that Boudica and Reynauld complement each other; if by complement, he means feed off each other’s aggression in a terrifying way. The coliseum’s already cracked floor gives way under their feet – heaven and earth tremble when they face off, much to the interest of the gathered.

Today’s not one of the exhibitions, however. It’s just routine weight and strategy training, and it’s _grueling._

At one point when he thinks he can’t lift another goddamned rain barrel, he vaults over the coliseum’s wall when Boudica’s head is turned, a terrifying few seconds where he’s scaling the wall before ducking down into the seating.

“ _Fuck me!-_ ”

He almost shits himself when he sees a pair of smoke-stained glasses peering up at him, beak pointed inquisitively at his face.

“You’re back.” Her palm turns upward. “The ring, please.”

“You had me there, old girl. God’s ears.” He scrambles to pull the rusted ring from under his glove, depositing it into her hand.

“You miss me, old girl? How’s the mistress?” He doesn’t have to see her face to see her preening.

“This is where we come to copulate,” she says proudly.

“I, uh, I see.” This spot, specifically, that he’s on-

“ _Not here._ Further up. Would you like to see our nest?”

Dismas would most definitely not like to see their nest.

She thumbs the ring, the mask tilting to the side. “She thinks my research is a stroke of genius – she’ll be personally patronizing my return to the university and demanding tenure and compensation. The dean will almost certainly fold, unless jellyfish have been classed as vertebrates during my expulsion.” It’s the same anger but tempered with affection, the kind that’s warm all over and red and definitely fleeting. Dismas doesn’t think she could give a damn about her research in the now.

He can’t have that. She’s the only one who gives a damn.

“I found they’re blind, the half-men.” Paracelsus looks up. “No scarring, no signs of trauma. Perfect all ‘round, like the large end of a boiled egg.”

“Then it’s congenital.” She sets down the ring, gets the journal out.

“And the torture rooms, the alchemy sets. None of them’s theirs, the skeleton men’s. Or the cultists, I don’t think. They haven’t been touched in years. And,” he’s not sure if she’ll believe it, even now, “some kind of ghoul caught us, dressed in yellow, with mirrored copies of Junia and Harcourt, only just the spines animated with energy-“

Paracelsus isn’t writing.

“There’s nothing to be done about that.” She goes back over something, crosses it out. “Such a thing is not science. It does not obey what we know.”

Something about that makes him irate – no, more than that. “Do the skeleton men obey science? Does this obey _science_?”

He traces one gloved finger through the grime of the gallery floor, absentminded in his anger. “A sick man can’t get enough air in his lungs, can’t speak, can’t think. Which symptom do you treat first?”

“The breathing is-“

“None of them. He’s _drowning._ Fuck’s sake. We're drowning.” He sits back, red in the face.

Paracelsus is about to say something until she sees the floor. “What is that?”

“What is what?-“ he looks down. Five spines and an almost-circle. “Oh. It’s the – you know.” He wipes his face with the dirty glove, frustrated. “It’s what the cultists wear, their headdress.”

“No, it’s not.” She cranes her head to the side.

“In alchemy, the number five signifies the classical elements. The initial four, of which there is no debate, are fire, air, water, and earth, which describe the human body in association with the four humors, which must be kept in perfect balance.” She circles the first four spines. “Aristotle calls the fifth element ‘aether,’ an unknown. An immutable essence, divine in nature – that which makes the soul.”

She circles the last spine. “Much older civilizations have identified it as ‘void.’”

Dismas squints. “They worship the elements, then, or the divine element?”

“No. They worship what they make: mankind.”

“Don’t that say all. That doesn’t make any sense. They worship man?”

Paracelsus doesn’t circle any more of the spines. She draws another shape next to the Iron Crown, just the almost-circle, bereft of any spines. The Halo.

She sits back, watching his face.

“How do you feed a god, Dismas?”

_

He can’t sleep at night. He pretends it’s the chest pain, before realizing it really is the chest pain.

Reynauld caught him climbing back over the siding - _stupid_ , really, he should have gone out the back of the gallery, but he was too gone to think about that – and made him do half an hour’s worth of drills.

Half the recruitment doesn’t come in on any given night anyways – either guarding the stagecoach on a supply run, sent out into the mountains to flush out the bandit camps, or clearing pathways through the thicket for this week’s expedition.

Someone raps the side of his bunk – Alhazred sets out two pitchers, one with milk, one with wine.

“Courtesy of the miller – I went to help him with this year’s unexpectedly early yield.” Alhazred pointedly swats his hand away from the wine, pouring him a tankard of milk.

“My chest hurts,” Dismas grunts, although the sentiment is more of a whine.

“That would be regrowth of the rib – have some patience with yourself. And I remember specifically prescribing rest-“

“You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about.” Alhazred looks up, even if he’s not surprised.

“You’d already lost half a row’s worth of teeth. You could barely eat.”

“That is not-“ Alhazred sets the pitchers on the floor. “I have always put everything above my own life. Even the pursuit of knowledge. This was the first time that I could not say, ‘I am prepared to be weighed at death.’”

Dismas smiles, even if he’s gritting his teeth. “I could tell you the first time I knew I wasn’t ready for judgement, but it wasn’t the death of a man that did it.”

“Let me tell you a story of how the martyr of a people dies. Then you will see the weight of one man on God’s scale.” 

Long after Alhazred’s tired himself out with his stories, Dismas sets out when the sky turns a watery gray.

_

He finds Junia in the gardens of the cloister, tending to the only green life that flourishes within the hamlet’s borders. She never came back to the barracks after the first expedition – she takes her meals separate from the male clergy, being the only nun of the quarters.

Dismas kneels down, gathers a handful of the last calendulas of the season, the tips of the petals already turning brown, and cuts them at their base with the shortsword.

“For your bedside, as I said I’d bring you,” he says, grinning. Junia looks up from the cloister’s bushes, taking the bouquet with a caustic indifference.

“Do men always kill everything they touch?”

“I can kill things without touching them, too. It’s what the gun’s for,” Dismas says. She’s not impressed.

She yanks several weeds out by the roots, working in silence.

He’s here more out of a strange sense of obligation, as if she’s still an invalid in the sanitarium’s towers – Dismas reckons he owes at least five other people on the hamlet his life, and yet he’s here with her, and they rarely speak. Most times it’s a comfortable silence; sometimes it’s not. 

Reynauld comes here after whatever the hell it is they do to him in the sanitarium’s locked rooms and after grinding each of his trainees into a fine paste in the guild. When he comes to the gardens it’s to relax, not to pray.

Dismas reads a few chapters at a time, until he comes to where the Danes rejoice in the death of the Grendel – warriors from the world over come together to hear the night’s undertaking.

  


“XIV. REJOICING OF THE DANES.”

“At early dawn, warriors from far and near come together to hear of the night’s adventures.  
In the mist of the morning many a warrior  
Stood round the gift-hall, as the story is told me…”

 

“You have no talent for story-telling,” Reynauld says.

Dismas draws the book up to his chest. “I’m the one who can read.”

“A story is much more than just the words on the pages,” he says, and Dismas wonders if he’s still talking about Beowulf.

“During the heart of winter in my home village, after the wheat and rye had long been gathered, in the long months when there was only porridge and salted herring in the kitchen – the only thing to look forward to in a day was the story-telling.” Reynauld takes his helm off, washing his face in the garden’s cracked fountain.

“An entire winter can be spent on the story of Parzeival, the Red Knight – the _Gral_ King. A full day could be spent with the story teller on just his duel with Ither, blood of his blood. It is not enough to just know that they fought – for it to be a story, we must know what each knight wore, of what quality and make it was, where the materials came from, what maidens pined for them from which courts-“

“ _Lord,_ boy. Use your imagination,” Dismas snipes. “Whatever you think of couldn’t be as far from the truth as what’s been written.” He turns the page. “Men don’t come together at the death of a monster to recount tales of heroism. It breaks them apart. They sit separate, in the comfort of an abbey’s garden perhaps, pretending it didn’t happen. Pretending it couldn’t happen, ever again.”

“That’s because we didn’t kill it,” Reynauld says. “When we find their progenitor, then we can have it written.”

“Oh, certainly. And will people care about what I wore, and what I ate, and what I thought of on that day?”

“They will,” Reynauld says. “They will write entire books dedicated to the subject.”

“I could always lie. I could tell them, I’ve never killed a man before, just the demons. I can tell them I was a saint, I could tell them I wore all white and deserve to eat at the table of Angels. Would they care then, even if they knew?”

“They would,” Reynauld says. “They’ve written entire books just like that.”

_

There are two groups of four lined up at the athenaeum’s doors at daybreak. There’s a host of reasons that that could be, but only one of them is aberrant enough that it lines his mind like a thin film, refusing to leave.

The heir is running out of time.

The man looks like a consumptive. He’s slow to lay out his careful expedition pieces, the myriad passageways and individual catacombs within the catacomb a cartographer’s nightmare. 

“There is no damage control to be had,” the heir says. “I cannot afford to pour more resources into this. There are some old reliquaries abandoned in the crypts-“ here he pushes forward a grainy diagram of a bronzed cabinet in the make of a cathedral, “-with trophies from some old holy war, I could not tell you which. I’m sending a team in for their retrieval. Bounty hunter, occultist, lawman, vestal. Choose your battles carefully. Your purpose is to save what you can and get out. If it comes between one mouth to feed and one relic-“ here his voice gets cold, “-it is not a choice.”

“The crusader, the glaive, the highwayman, and the physic comprise the second team. You’ll take the main passage here-“ he follows the primary artery of the crypt, then stops at the furthest point within it at a dead end.

“You do whatever it takes to end him- it. End it. However that is done.”

“Their necromancer.” Reynauld says it first.

“It will surround itself with its minions. It knows the end is near for it – its altars have been defaced and rendered useless for its purpose. The cultists will retreat back into their own lairs if they sense their allies will no longer be of use to them.” He says this all so confidently. As if any small hitch in the plan, any unexpected otherworldly beasts or unseen complication, wouldn’t bring all eight of them down to the bare bones of survival.

“This is an unnecessary risk.” That’s Paracelsus. “There is a finite end to the bonemen, limited to the finite number of corpses in the tombs. Sending us directly to their progenitor to save your coin will kill us.”

The heir says it so quietly everyone has to strain to listen.

“There is no finite end to the bonemen.”

That’s enough.

“This is fucking ridiculous-“

“They can’t fucking _reproduce-_ ”

“There is no finite end,” he repeats. “If they run out of corpses, they will _make_ corpses. The townspeople have suffered enough. If I send you in teams of four once a week, I’m cutting heads from a hydra, wasting resources of a finite fortune. The faster I can get to the immortal head, the better off we will all be. I promise.” It falls flat. It doesn’t matter.

The heir sits back, just a few moments standing leaving him drained. “I’m sorry. Go with god.”

Morning passes over the Estate’s catacombs, nine souls barely visible from the tree line of the Old Road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this, a two-party expedition? Technically, it's two separate parties on two separate expeditions - I think you'll see where it's going soon.
> 
> Chapter fact: the historical Paracelsus actually has a body of work concerning Aristotle's conceptions of the classical elements.
> 
> I've even made a [word cloud](https://knightfuck.tumblr.com/post/179782199462/o-dear-knightfuck-godlike-writer-will-the) for this chapter, mostly to see which words I'm overusing. Turns out it's "Dismas".
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking this one out with me - all of your comments help keep this alive. First boss fight time, lads.


End file.
